Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Deer Hunting A *RANT* on tracking deer

I completely agree with you!

When the temperatures do not allow you to wait until morning, you MUST track and find the deer! The size of the rack does not matter because I don't believe in merely "trophy" hunting. We owe it to the deer we kill to actually find and eat the deer. Do not waste a buck simply for his rack!

I have heard from more then one guide , that when a TV hunt waits til morning is code for lets find one that ain't gut shot or has a "TV worthy rack"

Ive used a dog quite a bit.....would post some pics but image site is down right now. A dog is THE way to go, as they can process a track quickly, and training one to do it is like training a fish to swim.


Only have one available that I can post right now.Dog found both elk with no trouble...

Last season during early archery, I split the difference on a marginal hit. I went back around 10 pm and found him. The blood had run out, but his eyes shined down in the creek.

rlott, I would like to modify my above post without inferring that a guy slack off on learning to find a wounded deer...which is basic teachable craft. I realize that sometimes a guy just can't find a deer, but hey, a little effort...particularly from those in the public eye with beginning hunters watching.

At the risk of dropping a name, a friend once introduced me to Art LaHa as the "world's greatest tracker." Well, Art could track day or night, there was no doubt about it. After I got to know him, he told me about a neighbors lady's beagle that they used for his bowhunters to find wounded deer...and he had a lot of bowhunters run through his camp back in the day, like a busload. The dog was near infallible and IIRC, also was instrumental in getting WI bow season approved--perhaps not in print...

That inspired me to try a plott hound I had. That dog found every live deer in the county and probably always wondered what was wrong with me.

Current GSD did not need any training as ingwe said--I just put him on the first blood and presto. He discriminates and makes it into quick job on wet days. If I lend him out, I go along and he is leashed. My wife would have my head if he got scratched.

One may want to check hunting regs as to the legality in yer particular state...:)

I would also like to know the answer to this question. if they do work, which one.


Thanks,
Doug

I've had two dogs that instinctively knew what to do. One pretty much taught the other. All I've had to do for the past 20 years is let my dogs out of the vehicle and say "Dead Deer," and off they go. I have done this with every kill I could, lost or not.

The last tracking job we had to do was about 4 years ago. #3 son, Angus, hit a doe a little too far back and it ran off on him. I brought Lily, the Beagle, out in the truck and let her loose. She correctly found where the deer had been standing and immediately took off for the woods in the correct direction. We all followed behind. I spotted the carcass about the same time she reached it. The doe had run a good 300 yards in the woods. She had left a decent blood trail, but following the dog was a lot easier.

Lily is 16 and probably won't make another trip to camp. She's got a bladder tumor and her battle is just about over. Jay, the Collie, is 12. He's always followed along, but I'm not sure he's got the nose to do it on his own. I get the idea he follows Lily the same way I do. The real expert in deer tracking was Barney, my shepard/collie mix. He's been dead for over a decade. Barney taught Lily. Both of them had spent their early lives living semi-feral and adopted us as much or more than we adopted them. You could tell Barney had done this for a living. Most dogs sniff a carcass and do a little licking when they first find it. Barney would launch on it like a starved hound and start pulling the hair off the haunches.

Just a few years ago Idaho approved the use of blood tracking dogs. They have to be kept on a leash and the animal has to have been shot within the last 72 hrs.

In regards to Coleman lanterns and UV lights and such:

I still keep my Coleman lanterns on standby, and I've used them on a couple of night tracking jobs over the years. Yes, it does make blood glow a funny color, but it is not all THAT distinct. You won't get a miraculous glowing trail, but it helps discern if it is really blood or just a funny discoloration of a leaf. Bring a flashlight so could can see both and tell the difference.

UV? I had a pocket UV illuminator that kind-of/sort-of worked, but you could tell this was an idea that was there to rope in hunters. Blood absorbs UV, so when you hit blood with a UV illuminator it appears black. That's great if you're at a crime scene. However, how is a dark patch in the woods going to be different than a shadow?

Luminol? Yeah, right? Get tank sprayers and start hosing down the woods. Get back to me on that one.

Peroxide? It works, but again it's like the Coleman lantern. You have to find the blood spot first and then hit it with Peroxide to see if it foams.

Back out until morning? Mostly rubbish. This is one reason why I never bow hunted until mid-October. You need to get on on that meat now unless it's going to be cold overnight. In 35 years of hunting, I've only had two deer that I bumped after shooting. The rest were stone dead. I just take my time buttoning up my gear before heading out. At most, that's a 15 minute wait.

It's one of my biggest peeves about watching those idiots on TV and I feel they are the main reason rookies do it. Down here you either find it shortly after the shot(pick up the trail within the hour) or it's ruined if you back out for very long as we rarely get cold temps for the majority of the season.

While I do agree with you, mostly, I much rather see toilet paper used. I have used a lot of surveyors ribbon in my day, while working, and would rather see something that goes away quickly used in my hunting woods. miles

One of the earliest things I remember from hunting when I was a kid was my Dad showing me how to use toilet paper when tracking. Deer running down a mountain side can make decent distance between blood drops. A little corner of toilet paper on a twig by each spot allows you to look back and see the track they've been running and use it to find the next spot of blood....or go back to the last drop and start again.

Have never backed out. If it's so late that I'm concerned about recovery or I'm short on workup time, I simply don't shoot.

With the media types it's all about the video. Never viewed a subsequent shot of the overnighters slicing up and downing a steak.

Ohio law permits leashed dogs for tracking wounded deer or turkeys, but you can not hunt with them. However, leashed is a liquid term here. If a dog is trained to voice or hand commands to a demonstrable level, he is leashed. If he is on a training collar, and is in control, he's leashed. And we have a 1' leash, not much more than a handle loop and dogclip, and no one has to be holding the leash. So a well trained dog can roam to the limits of his master's will. A poorly trained one is limited to the length of the rope.

http://www.newsmax.com/t/newsmax/article/647927

Shaman-hate to hear about your dog that might not make it through this season. You said something that anyone who wants to train a dog needed to hear. These days, here where I live, there are a number of people that have dogs trained to trail a bloodied deer. But before it was popular, a friend of mine always had a dog to track with. He told me that when training a dog to track, he would go get his dog even if he dropped a deer in it's tracks. And he would get the guys in his hunting club to call him even if their deer dropped where they could see it. Most of his dogs were Labs or a Lab mix.

That is the way I did it with Great Pyrenees. I like to have them find their first deer before they are 6 months old. I have had some good ones. The first one out of necessity, and the rest planned. First was an arrowed deer in stubble, and I could not find any blood. Arrow still in the deer. Pup, found blood and trailed the deer. Next morning was muzzle load season, and the pup trailed a deer that my hunting partner shot. That afternoon one for me. Turned out to be an amazing tracker. We have to keep them on a leash here, and
She drug me through a lot of thickets, but we found deer for lots of people that would have been lost. Longest track was a gut shot buck that went around 3 miles, as the crow flies. I finally caught up and cut his throat, but was played out. Crossed a bayou twice and the shallow end of a fish pond. Wet heavy clothes and boots, and my helpers with the rifle got left behind. miles

I hear that. We always go back and pick the ribbon up or if we backtrack we get it on the way out.

I use whatever I have on hand to mark trail. Sometimes it's TP other times its ribbon. I do have a small "tracking pack" that is about the size of a cigarette pack. I have a spare knife, a roll of ribbon, a book of matches, and a compass. It fits nicely on my belt and doesn't get in the way. That's usually what i grab when I have to track.

Looking back on my notes and memory, most of the deer I've shot didn't leave much of a blood trail. Most dropped on the spot or made a few hops and died within sight of where I shot them. Two notable ones were a big MN doe that left a trail Stevie Wonder could follow. She was shot at 11:05 A.M. in front of the shoulder. The bullet traveled through the lungs, heart and exited behind the off shoulder. There was so much blood in the snow that I could see blood through the brush, on the snow. She ran 50 yards and died in a deep ravine, real deep, with a creek in the bottom.

The other was one of the deer mentioned earlier that I left overnight. It was a WI 7pt buck. Shot 1/4'ing to me at 3:32 P.M. He dropped at the shot and fell over a small hill where I couldn't see him. I thought he was down since I didn't see him running away. So I took off a few clothes, grabbed my rope out of my pack and went to gut/drag him. I got to the site I shot him and there was tons of blood all over the place. He clearly thrashed around a bit. I didn't think it was a big deal. Lots of blood on at the site, lots of blood leading away from the site. I was sure he was dead just out of sight. I started to follow blood. Soon it was about 10 minuets into this trail. Then, I found a big chunk of gut mixed in. Still plenty of blood, Then, 10 yds up a chunk of fat. The blood turned to drops for a 20 yds or so. Then, nothing but tracks. It was getting dark and I had a head lamp. I was on my knees looking for blood but couldn't find any. It was getting hard to even find tracks in the leaves but I could make them out. I worked my way up to the overgrown logging road that goes through the area, barely big enough for a quad to run down now. It was dark now, the older guys were convincing me to come back in the morning. So, I followed the road back out to where my wheeler was parked about 1/4 mile from there.

Then next morning, I found him within minutes of looking by following scuff marks in the leaves where I left off the night before. He was probably another 75-100 yards further from where I left off the night before. He was shot onside in the liver and it exited through the gut. If I would have left him lay for 1/2 hr I probably would have found him within yards of where he dropped first.

They're all different. That's part of what makes it fun.

This combination happens at my camp "accidentally deliberately" if that makes sense. The "shoot them behind the shoulder" idea is so ingrained that in the heat of the moment it overrides better thought out shot placement for the given presentation.

Reminds me of one that I took with a crossbow two years ago. Fading light and I shot what I thought was a short coupled fawn of the year. The shot went behind the near shoulder all right, but instead of it being a lone small deer, it was a longer coupled adult doe. Blood and gut on the arrow spelled an oh, oh tracking job. Zero blood for a long ways and minimal blood when I did find some. That broadhead got liver and gut and came out ahead of the left hip. Not my longest tracking job, but a tough one.