First off I guess I should say that I have never seen a need for a string tracker. Over 40 years with a bow in my hands and I have always been able to track a deer or watch it fall.......until today. I've had a string tracker for more years than I can remember but have never used it. Most of my hunting has been from the ground. Either still hunting or spot and stalk. Stand hunting bores me to tears. This season the forest has been "crispy" for lack of a better description. Not even morning dew will quiet the fallen leaves. So, I have been using a stand, sweetened with a bounty of windfall apples from my trees (perfectly legal in Oregon). I've been supplementing a dozen deer for about two months now and there were a couple of fork horns showing up fairly regularly. I'm not a horn hunter so a forky suits me just fine. I saw one of them a few days ago and put an obsidian tipped arrow right over his back. My primitive arrows are about 200 grains lighter than my aluminums and I did not compensate enough for the weight difference. Oh well. Yesterday after sitting for hours I started reading a book, decided to stretch and look up and Mr. buck is standing there staring at me. Ooops! He wasn't sure what that thing in the tree was so he just wandered off withour spooking. This all brings me to this morning. What prompted me to strap on my string tracker I will never know, but I did. I had only been in the stand for about 1/2 hour when I heard a deer approaching. I stood up and got ready. He came in with a rather paranoid attitude but finally settled down to an apple repast. When he finally moved into a decent position I drew and released. The arrow struck high, just on my side of the spine and the buck dissapeared into the brush. Only those that live in coastal Oregon can appreciate what I mean when I say brush! The tracker line sped out for about 10 seconds and then just stopped. Hmmmmm, dead deer, or so I thought. I gave it about 15 minutes and there hadn't been a twitch on the line so I figured I was safe. I climbed down and started into the brush on hands and knees. There was absolutely ZERO blood. Hmmm, again. I kept following for about 30 yards and found my arrow, five yards further and found where the string had broken on the arrow end. I stopped cold thinking that the deer might have run out to the break in the line and kept going. I plopped my butt down and gave it another hour. I had the video camera going on the shot so I reviewed the footage, high hit and bit back, one lung at best I thought. Still no blood. Now I am the one acting paranoid! After an hour I started back on the trail and it led through some of the densest, nastiest pucker brush I have had the misfortune to crawl through. Finally some blood, a total of two little splotches and then nothing again. That little orange thread kept my hopes up though. A while later down the trail I hit a double string trail, my hopes definitely went up! Still no blood! After 100 yards or so I finally started to see regular drops of blood, I looked up and there was my buck. He had piled up in mid sprint. I believe that the arrow hit the dorsal Aorta on entry and the entire chest cavity was full of blood, just very little found its way out of the exiit wound. I am guessing that the string tracker either found what might have been a lost deer, or at the very least saved me a full day of searching out each and every deer tunnel through the ferns and salmon berry tangles.
Topic: talking of string trackers (Read 451 times)
