So after we got out of the pigs I told the hunter that I wanted to take five and then back up and run part of the track again to refocus Otis on the task at hand. We circled back a couple hundred yards and Otis put his nose to the ground and got right back on it again. We re-tracked the same path except this time when we came up to the small thicket I told the hunter that I wanted to avoid that area and loop around it like it was a messed-up search area. You could tell that the deer was headed through that thicket going back to the swamp it came from and we weren’t far from making our way through it when we hit the bedded pigs….. so I figured it we swept the backside of the thicket then we would hit the scent trail coming out into the hardwoods headed to the swamp.
That’s exactly what happened. As we were passing along the backside of the thicket about 100-150 yards past where we had earlier stopped….. Otis picked up on the old track again and eventually a few more small spots of blood. With the track being 24 hrs old, it was pretty easy to know he was back on the right track versus say something like a fresher pig scent trail. The old track required him to track no faster than a walk and keep his nose glued to the ground really digging to smell it……also working checks and looping back from time to time. A hot fresh trail will have a dog’s nose up in the air a lot and may be moving pretty fast. Something to keep in mind for anyone training a puppy.
We took the track on and away from the thicket for another 600 yards or so (about 900-1000 total) straight down the side of a flooded swamp before coming to the big creek and the property line. Otis was out ahead of us 50-75 yards and when we got to him he was searching for a way across the creek. We called it off there instead of trying to contact the neighbors as it didn’t look promising at all. Unless we passed it during the pig fiasco, there was never a spot where it looked like the deer had bedded.
It’s really hard to say where this deer was hit with no more info or evidence to go on. My best guess would be that it was just a flesh wound across the brisket or a leg with the very spotty dark blood and no real mule kick or reaction of a hard hit. No bone or anything like that either. Just very minor drips of blood here and there. I feel pretty confident that he didn’t sink it off into the deer’s body on a “quartering to” shot like that or the deer would have never made it as far as he did. He was shooting a 300 mag.
Well dammit man…..one of y’all blow some green chit out one’s guts and call me. We need something to get the bad mojo off of us and break this little run of scratched up deer. It typically works out in the end for most trackers to be roughly a 50/50 split of recoverable and unrecoverable tracks when’s all said and done. It seems like sometimes you may get 2 or 3 recoverable in a row though and then other times 2 or 3 non-recoverable. It’s just about like flipping a coin if you take every call that comes in. Folks hit them about any and every way possible. Otis has done his job well so I can’t fault him at all……it just sure is a lot more fun when we find a dead deer at the end of the trail instead of a road, river, or property line.
Just waiting now for the next call to come in……the next flip of the coin. C’mon cold front!!!!!!
We need something to get the bad mojo off of us and break this little run of scratched up deer. It typically works out in the end for most trackers to be roughly a 50/50 split of recoverable and unrecoverable tracks when’s all said and done. It seems like sometimes you may get 2 or 3 recoverable in a row though and then other times 2 or 3 non-recoverable. It’s just about like flipping a coin if you take every call that comes in. Folks hit them about any and every way possible. Otis has done his job well so I can’t fault him at all……it just sure is a lot more fun when we find a dead deer at the end of the trail instead of a road, river, or property line.
