Well, I may have mislead yesterday about the amount of time I planned to give the deer. I never planned to go purposely until the next day as temperatures where a bit warm. Where I left of in my story was just after the time of the shot. I figured to give 1 to 2 hours instead of the usual 30 minutes. After about 45 minutes I got down and retrieved my arrow. Looked real good with lots of heavy blood and no green matter or gut odor. I was pretty optimistic at that point but went ahead and returned to my treestand. Oh, I forgot, when I was going to pick up the arrow I heard what sounded like footsteps off to the left in the thicket 90 degrees out from the direction the buck ran. Sounded like calm walking/sneaking type steps of a deer. I was being quiet and whatever it was never did spook. Then I had to pee and didn't want to do it near my stand so I headed towards the levee behind my stand to do it over there and on the way I saw a nice buck come down over the levee and head into the thicket my buck had originally come out of and where I heard the footsteps. The buck I'd shot was in there too but had run straight away and so I figured he was much farther away towards the far end.
So, back into the tree stand and make a couple phone calls to pass the time. Whispering of course.
About 9:30 I figured 2 plus hours would have been enough and since the arrow was so bloody I was optimistic of a liver hit and a dead deer bedded reasonably nearby. Blood was good for 50 yards or so and then got spotty. By 100 yards it was downright difficult. I had about a 50 yard gap between what I thought was last blood and then a single drop I found by accident. That was it. This was by far the toughest tracking job I'd ever attempted and I was forced to go it alone. I was surely missing my old hunting buddy Bob who died of cancer a couple years ago. Ironically, the tree I was hunting from was one that he had suggested I use about 4 years ago and I never did until this year.
Well, after the blood ran out I started trying to walk grids but it is so thick in there that if you walk a 50 yard line and then try to move five or ten yards and walk a line back you get all messed up and can't tell how close you are to the first line. Just a difficult situation but I made the best of it. Of course, if a deer had his wits about him and wanted to hole up by burrowing into a deadfall or ripgut patch like a rabbit he'd be almost impossible to find from more than a few feet away.
Well, this is getting long again so the short version is I never found him. I crisscrossed that patch MANY times and finally decided to go with the last direction of travel which headed for the opposite side of the thicket where there was about a 30 yard wide swath of cockleburrs tapering into a dried up mudd flat then about a hundred acre patch of cockleburrs fading into mixed weeds and thorny honey locust sapplings then a big patch of willows and on the other side of the willows about 300 more acres of mixed weeds and thickets. The willow thicket was the nearest patch of "timbered" cover (about 1/4 mile away) so I just headed that way hoping to get lucky. I also planned to hit the river about another 1/4 mile past the willows and then walk the river all the way back to my stand thinking if it was a gut shot he might circle back and go to water. That was about a 3 or 4 mile hike all in all with the river being so bendy. I was hot, hungry and super thirsty with no water. (It was planned to be just a morning hunt) On the way I met a guy I'd talked to before on there and he offered to help me look but I told him to wait and I'd walk the river first and if I got lucky it wouldn't ruin his hunt.
Ended up we both spent a couple more hours trying to sort out the blood trail with no real luck but he did find two good spots of blood where I had the big gap in the trail where it looked like the deer stood a while.
By 4 pm I was so thirsty I was about to go drink some of the muddy river water but the other guy gave me a couple sips of his power aid. I tell ya, a cold beer never tasted half as good as that warm power aid.
Kept looking till dark then put the bow up, got my lantern and headed back down to the general area to wait for coyotes to start raising a fuss. If it was anywhere near where my buck was headed I planned to light the lantern and run them off. No luck other then hearing two different groups sound off with a short reville after dusk then silence.
Came home disgusted, exhausted and upset.
Went back this am at dawn to listen for crows and only got what I got from the coyotes. A morning wake up call/hello chorus from a couple birds and silence.
Looked a little more, pulled down my markers and headed home so I could take my 12 year old daughter Lindsey out for the first day of rifle season. It's her first year and I had planned to have here out at daylight under normal circumstances.
Things have looked up again for us though. Lindsey made a perfect shot on her first deer ever using my 45-70 at about 60 yards. It was a nice fat doe . She ran about 20 yards and piled up. (I'm so proud!!! She did great!) So, we still have some venison for the freezer after all.
Two things that I've figured out worked against me on my buck. One, when I took the shot, instead of aiming at a spot on the deer I instead aimed at the center of the gap between the tree trunks which put my shot a little far back. Two, I think the other bucks running the field and the buck I saw coming off the levee into the thicket may have spooked my buck out of the area. I've heard that a rutting buck will sometimes take advantage of a wounded buck to whup up on him. Kinda like turkeys will fight a dead gobbler after you shoot him
I think all the deer running that thicket did as much harm as if I'd taken up the trail right away instead of waiting my two hours.
Also, in dry weather, two hours time is enough to start drying up small spots and making them turn brown and harder to see..
Topic: Amazing day goes real bad... (Read 812 times)
