Actually let’s back up to last night. Three calls came in last night all literally within a 3-4 mile circle. The first one was the buck in the picture. That hunter had shot the buck with a 300 mag from about 300 yards. The sign at the hit site was classic low belly shot. Big wad of white hair. They had found two decent spots of blood but nothing past about 75 yards.
Otis was really slow and meticulous on this track. The deer was only bleeding speck here and there. He took us on a slow steady line though for 475 yards right to the deer. It only took us about 15-20 minutes. I was proud of the quick find to start the morning.
The second call that came in last night didn’t have too many details. They had tracked really good blood for a couple hundred yards before losing it. I found out when I got there this morning that they had also found bone too so I knew we were likely dealing with a leg hit. Otis picked right up on this one and took it on a trot about 600 yards to the paved road where it crossed over onto a well known hunting plantation. We found blood leading right up to the road.
The hunter had already talked to the folks the night before and got us the go ahead but he called them again this morning to let them know that it had for sure crossed. We tracked it another couple hundred yards onto the hunting plantation when we came upon where the deer had bedded for the night. There was a pretty damn good bit of blood in the bed.
I found it odd that we didn’t at least get the deer up out of that bed but I want to believe that coyotes got after this deer. He came up out of his bed and did a complete loop before entering in some hardwoods running parallel with the road we had crossed earlier. We found blood confirming it but it completely shut off after that point compared to what we were finding before the bed. Otis tracked it parallel with the road for another 400-500 yards before crossing BACK over the road again onto the original property. To make a long story short, we followed this deer a LONG ways before finally just calling it off so the hunters could get on the road headed home. They had a several hour drive. It was just surprising to me that we never came up on this deer at all. He should have been in that bed but something got him up out of before we got there and pushed him WAY down the trail. It never seemed like the track went hot.
One really cool thing about the track was that we came across an old cemetery along our route. I didn’t snap the best pic in the world but if you look the dates are Born 1821…..Died 1854. That pretty old there. Maybe some of first families in Alabama?? Many of the other tombstones could barely be read.
