Aldeer.com Forums Alabama Deer Talk Al Dogs The Tales of Otis and Shelby Lou

Don't know what to say about this one. Sounds like the hunter has a flinching/eyes closed problem when he shoots.

I enjoy a lot of the stories of your tracks but this one is tough. I know we all do our best for quick, clean kills but these are the ones that will keep you awake at night.

Hate y'all didn't get him today but sounds like you guys did all you could. Give Otis an extra biscuit this afternoon.

CNC as well as you document your tracks and planting you ought to write a book specifically detailing what you have learned. You have special tangiable insight that is very valuable to hunters and trackers!!!

I appreciate that jallen. I may have to do something like that one day. I enjoy sharing the stories with everybody.


Yeah, this is a tough one for sure fellas. I think sometimes hunters shoot the gun they think they need instead of the one they're the most comfortable with. I hunted with a 30-30 from the time I was 13 until I was in my late 20’s and I killed a slew of deer with it. I finally started hunting some land where I needed to be able to reach out 250 yards if need be and that’s when I had no choice but to go to a bigger gun…..So I bought a Ruger 30-06.

It took me a good while to get used to the feel of it in my hands after having only ever shot my 30-30 for all of those years. I still don’t like the feel of it in comparison but I’ve learned to shoot it over time. My 30-30 just felt like an extension of my arms though. That’s what I think a lot of folks are missing with their shooting. Now I don’t really like .243’s any more than I like someone overkilling it…..but that being said, what I do think is the most important thing in gun choice is to use one that feels comfortable in your hands…..one that you can hold steady….one that you don’t even really feel the kick when shooting at deer. Shot placement really is far more important than the size of the gun.

Crap here is a simple question. Do wounded deer go to water.. ? Do wounded deer run up hill or down hill. What percentages? Does the type of hit make the difference. Having specific track history makes you uniquely qualified to provide answers. Anyway thats my two cents.

And I go by Allen. I should have left off my first initial lol.

Now that’s funny.....

Yes, they’ll most definitely go to water a lot of times. Those tend to be things like low gut wounds or severe leg wounds. I’ve seen places where you could obviously tell that the deer was using the mud to help clot and treat the wound.

As far as not going uphill and all that…..there’s nothing to any of that. They’ll go anywhere they normally would….over fences…up and down ravines…..across creeks….whatever…..I had a track two years ago where one swam across a slough with its guts hanging out of its belly.

The one thing that does typically hold true for most of them though is that just about all of them tend to make a big circle and go back to their bedding area. We walked a mile on the track today and when we finally called it we weren’t but a few hundred yards from the truck. I look at it just like your dog seeing your house/yard as his safe space. Deer have a bedding area they feel safe in and if they go any distance then that’s usually where he’s headed.

I’ve said this before but while we’re on the topic of tendancies….One of the biggest tendencies I see that everyone could benefit from knowing is that most deer that are severely wounded will initially bed up within 300-400 yards nearly every time. I have seen marginal bow shots bed up as close as 100 yards from the hit site. Really take that into consideration when climbing down from your stand after the shot to assess the situation.

Dang man, that's tough right there. I hope they can get this deer killed soon.

"placement really is far more important than the size of the gun."

Tell my wife that all of the time.

This one might actually bleed out enough to get anemic eventually. It looked like he was having a hard time clotting up. The spot of blood I was talking about in the story caught me off guard when we ran across it. It wasn’t just a single bed with blood….it was an area the size of my living room that was painted in blood. It was on the ground, on the bushes, on the trees….everywhere…..it looked like someone took a gallon jug of blood in each hand and just went to slinging it. It didn’t look so much like the deer was bedded…it looked more like he was just walking around in a little area, stopping and bleeding puddles while slinging his head around...all night long until we ran him off from that spot this morning. You could even see a distinct pattern on the ground in one spot that looked like he was just swaying his head around ….back and forth, back and forth sorta like a figure “8”.

The only time he even let the dogs get close to him was right before we called it off. I could hear him bolt across a hardwood bottom out ahead of us just as the dogs were about to catch up to him. I kind of wish the hunter would let us get back on this one again in the morning and see if he isn’t really weak by then. It’s just a matter of time with this one.

CNC maybe offer that to the hunter? This post really hasn't set well with me...not placing blame on the hunter but things like this give us in a bad light...i know that might mean you working for free but I'm sure you would like to see the right thing done. Heck I'll pay some of the fee your owed!

Sounds like his gun wasn't sighted in to me. Thats just shitty shooting.

I hear you….I’ve been thinking about calling him back all afternoon…..In all honesty though, it’s really just anyone’s guess as to how long it’ll take that buck to wear down enough we could get him. He’s not wounded internally so he doesn’t have anything slowing him up. As much as it sucks, it’ll likely take him days or maybe even a week or two to succumb to his injuries.

There’s not much hunting related that turns my stomach but the thought of that animal walking around all night in pain, not able to eat or drink, makes me cringe.

Dang, just dang.

So I need to tell another story that I skipped in order to get us caught up. I really didn’t mean to skip it but I was in a hurry that day and left out without posting up the pre-track information. By the time it was all over there wasn’t much of anything to tell about but a very valuable lesson was learned none the less.

The day after I killed my buck I woke up the next morning early and got started skinning him out as the sun was just coming up good. I wasn’t in any hurry so I took my time with it…probably spending a good hour and half getting him cut up and put in the cooler on ice. During this whole process the dogs are “helping” me by pulling on the hide and picking up any little scraps. I didn’t think anything about it and I was just letting them have a good time….pitching a small scrap of meat to them here and there along the way. They get deer legs to eat in the off season all the time so deer meat wasn’t something foreign to them eating. I didn’t really think they had gotten that much of it....... but apparently they did.

About the time I’m getting nearly finished up, the phone rings with a tracking call. The hunter reported that he had shot a buck the evening before with buckshot and wanted to see if I could find it. I told him I’d be there just as soon as I got cleaned up and got my stuff together. No sooner than I tell him that and hang up the phone…..I look over at Otis and he pukes a huge pile of dog food and deer …..then he proceeds to hack a few times and pukes up another pile.

Well, we loaded up and headed to the track anyways with hopes that he felt better after getting all of it out of his belly......Nope.... He puked a third time on the ride and when we arrived at the hit site, neither dog was worth a damn for anything. They had no desire to track at all. They acted like someone who had just walked away from Thanksgiving dinner with nothing but a nap in their future. Shelby wasn’t even her normal high energy self. She didn’t get sick until later on but eventually she puked everything up too. I just apologized to the hunters and thankfully they were old time rabbit hunters who understood what had happened.

Fortunately, the stomach problems didn’t last more than a day. We got up the next morning and both of them seemed to feel a lot better. We went on the jaw shot deer and they tracked it just fine. No more deer meat during deer season for either of them though…..lesson learned.

Maybe I missed it, but congrats on your buck!

Good thing they don't ride in the front of the truck! And congrats on the buck!

Thanks fellas!....I posted the pics of him in my T&M thread since he was killed in the test plot. Here he is again if you missed it…..

^^^^ Heck yeah! Great buck!