Received this report today from Cliff who has been super busy lately. Thank you, Cliff!
I took a track on Christmas Eve during the afternoon for my cousin's good friend. I called my brother in law Andre where he could get his new pup Aleah some OJT.
Hunter's Story
The shot was about 250 yards on a broadside buck standing. At the shot the buck hit the ground then jumped up and ran to the thickest stuff you can walk in. They had good blood that they tracked for 150 yards. Hunters also reported seeing some corn stuff in the blood.
What we found
The shot site was down a gravel/ grass road. We drove in our trucks followed the hunter to the shot site. When we got ready to go to the hit site, I looked down and saw, quite by accident, a drop of blood under my truck. Hunter said....Oh yea, After the deer was shot, fell down and jumped back up....it ran that way and then turned away and ran fifty yards before cutting into the woods. Tasha checked the hit site and found nothing. Tasha took us to the cutover which may be the worse briers that I have ever been in. Andre and Aleah were also working the blood trail we found here. The trail was lite drops of blood scattered along with a few small waist high smears on grass. There were two small areas about the size of saucers where the deer had stood and dripped blood. We only found blood for 60 yards when I checked the GPS. Tasha took the track about two hundred yards but I never saw any indication other than a very deep track along this trail. We never saw any corn or any other indication of gut shot. We started over, walked the perimeter and even tracked blindly down deer trails. They was no wind blowing but when we did get a breeze, Tasha raised her nose and sampled the air for 20 seconds or so. I made sure that we spent some time checking this area out thoroughly. After over two hours of thick thick cutover tracking, we were not able to advance the track.
Learnings for us:
- don't park in you hit site.
- do a complete interview of the hunter.....I didn't do a complete interview over the phone because I knew that I was taking this call regardless. I am still not sure if the hunter shot once or twice. This was a new bullet for his rifle that had not been sighted in prior to the hunt. I probably still don't have all the pieces of the puzzle.
- a good pair of brier pants, brier jacket and brier gloves are worth the investment.
Well, we didn't find the deer. I believe it was hit high because of the blood smears it left high on the grass and the fact that it dropped instantly but then jumped up and regained his composure. They will watch this area for buzzards. It is right by his house. I mailed him the GPS track analysis with areas of concern highlighted on it. They will let us know if they find out anything else. The hunter also shared some homemade pickled okra, homemade salsa and homemade hot pepper jelly with us. Another fun outing. Tasha and Aleah crashed all the way back home.