Haha. I hear you. Well, it appears that you've mastered the task quite well. Now go track us another deer to read about!
I’m waiting by the phone for one of you guys to gut shoot another one……….
In all seriousness though………We’ve talked about this before in the past but it sure won’t hurt to repeat it.
I had a call last Sat that we didn’t get to go on because the hunter had to be somewhere before we could get there. However, he told me the story about what had happened and it’s a classic mistake that so many of us make over and over again. He said the big 10 he had been after for a couple of years finally came in a gave him a shot but he’s pretty sure he hit high and back as the deer started ducking.
So right up front he knew that the shot was marginal….That’s a big red flag to back out and proceed conservatively with your search. The hunter proceeded to track the deer after an hour and jumped him at 150 yards. Like many, mortally hit deer……this one bedded up quickly. It’s usually somewhere between 100-500 yards. It’s only after the hunter pushed the deer that he went farther.
After the hunter jumped the buck he continued to keep tracking it. He said that he finally ran out of blood at around 1000 yards from the hit site. In this situation fellas…..that whole track from where he jumped the deer at 150 yards out to the 1000 yard mark where he lost it.... wasn’t ever gonna be a blood trail to a dead deer…..it was just pushing a live deer farther and farther away. Second big red flag to us as hunters is if we jump the deer…..BACK OUT and don’t keep pushing it. The deer may just bed up again a few hundred yards away if you leave him alone.
These marginally hit deer take some time to expire. If you know for a fact you’ve hit one and it isn’t smoked…..go home and give it some time…..a lot of time. Seeing these deer still alive 12-18 hrs later after being marginally hit will give you a new appreciation for waiting after the shot.
