Half Racked/Full Track

My younger brother, Nicholas, recently arrowed a buck from one of our stands, the “donut up-top stand”, which was named this because it overlooks a little piece of woods that has an alfalfa tote road that circles it, on a Saturday evening.  I was not on stand that night, but met him back at my house following the hunt.  Upon his return I could tell right away that he had shot one, but I could also tell nearly immediately that he didn’t feel great about the hit or the findings.  He explained the shot angle to me and went into great detail how the scenario played out that evening as he hit the buck from approximately 22 yards and he took off with a good portion of the arrow still not penetrating and soon thereafter breaking off within sight, thanks in part to the visionary aid of the luminock as it was nearing dusk.  He further noted that upon inspection 15 minutes following the shot he did find slight traces of blood and the broken arrow, but that was it.  We decided to wait a minimum of three hours as we suspected a liver/single lung shot, and ultimately gave it close to four hours before resuming the track with headlamps and flashlights.

Upon returning to the scene Nick and I went through the positioning of the deer and sightline as to where the deer ran and began to track again.  –The blood (or lack thereof) hadn’t got better and we struggled to inch our way forward for quite some time, but did find a small trace here and there before we couldn’t find a drop.  We searched high and low meandering up and down plausible escape routes from the last blood.  Finally, I stumbled across some very good blood about 75 yards from where the last drop was spotted.  Here, it appeared as though the deer had paused and walked for about twenty yards.  The blood looked dark and crimson red, which made us believe it was indeed a liver hit.  Now, the blood looked very good though and I didn’t think it’d be too long before we would come across the deer.   Unfortunately, this was not even close to the case as the decent blood only lasted about twenty yards and then went to nothing, absolutely nothing.  We once again worked off of the direction that the deer had been heading, but it became apparent that the deer had changed direction here and was no longer on the same path.   -We thought that the deer had paused here after the initial rush off from the scene and perhaps when Nick had left his stand to back out that it had been bumped and took off on a hard run again.  Either way, the bloodtrail was now gone and the night was long so we decided at 1:30 am to call it a night and resume the track in the broad daylight the morning would bring.

Upon the return to the woods the next morning Nick and I had additional tracking help by the means of his girlfriend, Randi, my son, John Daniel and my dog, Otto.  –The woods were far from sterile now and we knew it was turning from a blood trail recovery to a body search.   We formulated a plan going into the search and I had a couple of good starting points where I’d take JD and Otto and see if we could find anything.  After not finding anything at the first two spots we were really beginning to scratch our heads.  We headed into the last real decent spot I thought looked like a possibility.  This spot was thick, younger pines that just about made us feel claustrophobic because of its density.  Soon thereafter, by some grace of God, we looked down and found a drop of blood along the floor of this pine hell.  JD and Otto both got excited and we soon found another and another! At this point we held off on moving further into the track as I called Nick to get him on the scene.  –I felt good about this, even though it was still pretty poor blood. 

Once Nick and Randi arrived we resumed the track and it was a pretty steady dime-sized drop followed by another, followed by the deer only thirty to forty yards from where we had discovered the blood!  It appeared by the RM that had set in that the buck had expired in the early evening.  The shot had entered behind the diaphragm and put a slice through the opposite side’s liver without exiting.  All in all, a lot of smiles.  The deer was perfectly intact as no coyotes had found this booty and the temperature had dipped just below freezing that night and the meat was perfect yet.  It is always such a pleasure finding a deer like this that may have otherwise not been found.  We determined that the deer had made it approximately 600 yards from where it was hit to where it had eventually died, which is about right for a liver shot like this.   Good work, everyone!