My buddy Kyle is headed after one in Harvest. I should ride with him but im being lazy. Slow opening day, first one I haven't tracked on in years. Phone will probably start ringing now
I'd about done give up on getting a call today but one just came in.......Guy shot one with a crossbow this evening......He's not sure where he hit it but says he has good blood on the bolt and then on and off blood for 100 yards then nothing.......Been looking for it with a drone but the canopy is too thick and they're not having any luck.....We're gonna meet up about daylight in the morning and see what the dogs can do........
No luck this morning.......It was most likely a high shot through the top of the shoulder area.....Broahead was bent with some meat on the fletchings.....We tracked it approx 700 yards to the backside of a pond.....We searched around the pond but no deer.....Otis was bouncing around like there was a hot track leaving the pond area as we walked up to it......I figure the deer had bedded down there for the night and got up out ahead of us......He'll most likely be ok
Got another call from this morning's hunt.......They have this one on video......It's hit way back in the guts......I advised them to let him lay until this afternoon so we're gonna wait until just after dark and hopefully he'll be expired by then......
Deer was still good and alive......Jumped him out of his bed at about 500 yards from the hit site.....Still way too lively to do anything with.....The shot was a straight intestinal hit with a small fix blade broahead that entered in front of the hind quarter and out the bottom of the belly probably around its pecker......Nothing but a clear fluid on the fletchings.....It'll likely take several days or more to die.....I've dealt with a few of these over the years and its about the worst possible hit you can make with a bow in terms of it being lethal but hard to successfully recover......We had one like this 4 or 5 years ago that we jumped up and chased for several hundred yards before calling it off......The hunter found the buck dead a week later in the same bed where we originally jumped him....Said he looked to have only been dead for a day or two
Lets see if this works.....If anyone can get a still frame shot you can see the arrow enter low just in front of the hind quarter.....It really only clipped about half the deer....Very, very marginal hit
Anybody wanna ride and go look for a big one later tonight? Hopefully we'll have some pics on this one
Wish I was closer. Hopefully things start picking up for me tomorrow
I sure could have used a co-pilot tonight......An hour away is as far as I go and this one was every bit of it.....I like the ones that are less than 30 minutes a whole lot better
Here’s the one from last night……He was shot high in the back behind the shoulder…..It was a lethal hit with good penetration but he just didn’t put out any blood on the ground…..We only found pin drops along the track…..He made it about 150 yards…..It made for a pretty straight forward recovery other than the dry conditions making the dogs have to work a little harder than they should have……C’mon rain!!
Rode across town earlier to see if we could help a guy find one he shot this evening…..He didn’t have any blood and couldn’t find the arrow but said the deer ran off making a “Muuuuuh!” sound…….There wasn’t anything we could do to help him though…..The spot he was hunting was on the edge of some old fields that were grown up in solid briars……and I mean solid brairs….It was so bad the dogs couldn’t even walk through it to try and search to pick up on something……I have a feeling he slammed it in the shoulder anyways and there probably wasn’t anything to find……I’m glad it was local……I’ve found deer for him before but I had to just call this one off…….I’ve had some rough ones in the past but I don’t know if I’ve ever had another one where the dogs couldn’t even walk around to search
We got our first Bama track Friday night. A friend of a friend of a friend had shot a buck on public land and knew the shot was a little back. He gave it about 5 hours and got down and started looking. He could only find small amounts of dark blood and lost the track only 100 yds in. At this point he went to grid searching…
I figured it would be a little tough to work through but we agreed to give it a try after looking at the video and seeing that the shot was for sure a little back (but couldn't tell the height of the entry). We arrived about 9 hours after the shot and had to take a short boat ride. Had some GPS receiver troubles and had to try working it on lead and tromped it even more before finally getting receiver to work.
Anyway, we restarted and finally worked through the tromped area to fresh ground. At this point Slate started making ground and looped back towards the lake about 200 yds away. At this point he was in the lake and I could tell he had gotten the deer up. They took us back across area we just come through and back into the lake again. At this point we could not really tell which way he went so we decided to get back in the boat and ease down the bank. Sure enough he was standing in the water down the bank and went back up on land. Got both dogs back on him and made another big loop right back to almost same point in the lake. The deer hit the water and swam around the boat. At this point it come to an end, after right at 2 miles.
Best part was after all the tromping in the thick briars there was no dragging involved. Deer looked to be shot low liver.
Was proud of the pups working through the grid search in super dry conditions. Glad to finally get some rain and things should be even better.
![[Linked Image from i.imgur.com]](https://i.imgur.com/sYIkLiQ.jpeg)