yeah. That was the craziest thing. There was a brisk wind on Friday coming from the south and I got to smelling something close to the barn and coming from the pond and I knew it had to be a deer. I gotta tell you though, I was pretty shocked when I got to the pond and saw his rack sticking up. And I'll tell you something else, a deer laying in the water for about a month will make a buzzard gag.
To paraphrase the late, great Paul Harvey, "Now we know...the rest of the story."
Dr. B
Yep, I’m glad y’all finally found that one. That’s a really nice buck. This is really a telling track too in a lot of ways that we can all learn from. It shows how much that just seeing blood can fool you into believing you’ve smoked a deer. The hunter that day firmly believed that the deer was smoked because of “all the blood” we found.
This was also one of those “bubbles in the blood” tracks. The hunter felt like the blood was coming out of the deer’s nose because he saw bubbles in it. I don’t say any of that to hack on the hunter in any way…..but rather just to show how our brains often want to perceive things as the best possible scenario when other clues are still telling us otherwise. I see it in most tracks we go on. The fact that the deer went 300 yards, bedded, and then got up and left was a sure sign this wasn’t a smoked deer. It would be really interesting to know exactly how the buck ended up in the pond and how long it took him to get there.
Something else this track show us is how a marginally wounded deer like this has the potential to end up anywhere no matter which way you originally saw him run. I often hear people tell stories on here and assume that the deer couldn’t do this or wouldn’t have done that…..but these wounded deer can do pretty dang much anything and go in any direction.
Alrighty…….who’s ready to go do some shooting practice this summer.
