Don’t push your deer if you can help it!

Sam called my wife yesterday, his friend Nick had shot a really nice buck and had gotten a full pass through. they had tracked a little passed the shot site but backed out after about 100 yards. Nick described the behavior of the buck after the shot as sorta hunched over and walking slowly. They decided to go back that night and take a look around but then decided to commit to using a tracking dog. We scheduled our track to begin after my physical therapy at 11:30. By 1PM I was meeting up with Nick.

Alli and I started near where the hunter thought the hit site was. There was not a ton of blood or sign for us to use, and there is a ton of deer traffic in the are. So we really wanted to get on the right track. The wind was really rolling today also. After I started the dog, she took the path that the hunter had seen the deer go down and after about 200 yards or so I really questioned wether we were on the track or not. We started to head in a different direction than the deer had been seen to go (not that, that means a lot always). I decided to try over and we met up with Nick near the start. We found a nice spot of blood and I decided to use that to start, this way I know we were on the right deer. And we were off. We headed down the path and passed their known last blood. We also headed in the opposite direction that we were the first time. The dog seemed to be tracking a bit nicer too. Eventually we looped around and back up towards where we were at the first time… and then down to the water. The Hunter suspected the deer would be near the water. Eventually we found the waters edge. We ran into Sam at the waters edge, where he parked their boat with hopes that they were going to load the buck onto the boat. At this point, we had covered a lot of ground. Now, at the waters edge, we found a new looking bed with blood in it. Potentially, the hunter may have bumped this deer last night when they came to check things out. At this time, we were tired. the dog was tired too. We had done about 3.5 miles all in all. We decided to leave and the hunter decided to grid search. I told the hunter to keep an eye open and watch cameras.