Saturday Afternoon October 11th, 2025

I was pretty tired Saturday and was thinking of just resting up. We had plenty to do this weekend anyways. I was letting calls go to voicemail, that I suspected could be track requests. I do this only because I can be easily convinced to take a track :). Well, Marie also received a call from the same hunter and had said I could probably be available. At first the scenario seemed promising. The blood, well I don’t have a crystal ball, and I don’t think I am very good at bloodoligy (I just made that up). But, there are some things that come to mind when looking at it. Bright red can mean muscle. Bubbles can also mean muscle. Watery blood can be muscle. Big amounts of blood right away and suddenly stop, can also be indicative of muscle wounds. These tend to convince hunters that the wound is from lungs, or that it is “good blood”, or lots of blood so “it has got to be dead”. Who knows, perhaps they’re correct. Typically not. But its okay, we see so many different scenarios as trackers…

Turns out, this hunter had a buddy with him, and they “didn’t go too far”, and “stopped at last blood”. It is an interesting story when you arrive to the site, the story starts to unfold. We asked to be taken to the original hit site. There was nothing visual there, I don’t know that we were on the right spot, but that is where he said his arrow was laying. I waved my hand like a magic wand over the imaginary area where I assumed the buck was standing, and gave my dog the casting “Find It” command. typically, if its a good track she already starts or seems impatient with me because she’s eager to follow. This time was …meh.

After about 80 yards of round robin (search area, grid search), we get to about where the buck started to go up a little ridge and I ask the hunter about all of the supposed blood that was there. I was told it was basically a walking path of blood. Eventually we start to see some blood on the ground, in a track direction up the ridge. We find ourselves heading to the “big pool of blood”, where the hunter was proudly standing over. Ally starts to sniff and lick it a bit. We start heading from there in the direction towards the neighboring house, also towards the road. The hunter stays back at the last blood as we venture on. We eventually break out of the timber at the neighbors house. I stop and water the dog and try to cool her off. We get back into the woods and meet up with Peyton, our daughter. I take the dog back to the spot and start again. She takes me back up to the road, a slight different path from the neighbors, but same direction. We go probably 200 yards or so into this place acrross the road. I couldn’t remember if we had permission here so I backed out and started to talk to the hunter, back at the same “last blood”. The hunter has little interest in what I am telling him but asks me about the area in the opposite direction, where he swears he heard a crash.

It is an interesting feeling, being a tracker and working your dog, trusting your dog, doubting your dog, and then trusting your dog etc. After no find, after no find, it can wear on you if you let it. When you express to someone what you and your partner are doing, what your partner is telling you, and they shrug it off like they don’t believe the dog… “Yeah sure buddy, I will take my dog for a walk over there instead”. I circled around the bottoms area that the hunter swears the deer must be. When I got back I told the hunter, well that’s about all I can do for you. She had no interest over there.