Another nice recovery for Boone
Late season tracks are usually tough to come by, so I was pretty excited when I got a text from a hunter looking for a tracker late last night. The hunter felt like the shot was a bit far back, but angling forward into the buck. The hunter tracked the deer for about 80 yards, but wasn't able to advance the track any further. He did a short range search, then backed out and began looking for a tracker.
He was concerned that the deer was running straight up a very steep and rocky hill immediately after the shot, and also that it had rained on the track overnight. I felt confident that Boone could do this track justice, and made the 90 minute drive out to meet him the next morning.
We took up the track about 19 hours after the hit. There was no blood left at the hitsite, and very little up to the point of loss. In fact, what was present was so washed away that I wasn't able to determine much more about the shot than what the hunter had already told me. No gut material was initially present, so I was thinking that this was most likely a liver hit. However, this deer was running up a very steep rocky embankment with plenty of rocky bluff outcroppings.
We continued another 200 yards past the point of loss before I heard the hunter call out "Blood!" This was the first speck we had seen since the hunter's last mark. After another 200 yards without any evidence, I downed Boone in the woods, and did a careful search along a gravel logging road that crossed through the area. Still no blood was noted. Now both the hunter, his companion, and I were starting to wonder if we were on the right trail. I had taken notice just before “downing” Boone that Boone that he was wind scenting an area of timber tops nearby, which is unusual for him unless a deer is close. After a little searching, I called Boone over, and had him work into the area that he was interested in. It wasn't long before he started dragging me down a trail in the same direction. After about 50 yards, I noticed blood, and felt a little bit of relief. I suspected the deer was near. However, it wasn't the deer that we discovered in one of the timber tops, but rather 3 separate beds where the buck had bedded down for a period of time. I also found scattered fragments of digested food in the blood. Now I knew we were closing in on a dead deer. Boone got really sucked into all the scent in the area, and worked his way around looking for an exit path. His first path didn't reveal any further blood, and I restarted him again. The second time he took a path that headed straight downhill. 50 yards later, I saw some more blood. As we worked our way down the path, more blood became evident, and eventually the wound opened up, leaving more blood and food particles. I knew we weren't far....
That's when we came to the fence line along the property line. The property was owned by a company, and after a couple of calls we were told that we would have to wait a while before we would get an answer about crossing to recover the deer. Nearly an hour passed without a word. Eventually, we all decided that I would have to take Boone back, and leave the hunter to wait for access. Thankfully, it wasn't long after I had left, that the hunter called me to tell me that he had been given access to search the area. Just a few minutes after that, he called me again to tell me that he had recovered the deer, just across the fence. Both the hunter and his companion confided that they had doubted the dog and I during several parts of the track, and both told me how blown away they were that he was able to sort through all the deer scent to recover this buck. The hunter assured me that he would never have recovered this deer without a dog, as it had gone in a much different direction than he had imagined, and left so little blood during the first 400-500 yards of the track. The autopsy revealed a mid-gut shot exiting through the liver, and still the deer travelled about 600 yards, largely uphill without being pressured by the hunter. They are remarkably resilient animals, no doubt. Thankfully, despite a less than perfect shot, the hunter did several things right. He didn’t push the animal, and he backed out when the sign became difficult to follow. Then best of all, he called us.
The only bad part was that Boone didn’t get to chew on the deer for a bit, but he didn’t seem to mind.
Good hunting! Brady