Way to go! Good pooch!!
Daisy Mae must really have a cold nose. That sure is a long way to have to work and find him but at least you found him.
:saluting
Congrats again man! Stoked you found him. Can't wait for the story.
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Thanks all!
Yes Daisy was treated like a queen the rest of the evening including a steak. The buck had been dead for sometime and was stiff as a board so the meat was not saved. But if we would have kept on the trail after dark, I'm afraid we would have just kept pushing him. From where we stopped last night he went about 250 yards more before expiring.
Quick Story...
The hunt itself lasted no more than 30 from the time I climbed the pine to when I shot the buck. It was just one of those morning I just knew I would have some action. The morning was a bit cooler than it had been the whole week and I knew it only took a little change in temps to bring out the bucks. I had hunted the morning before and had 2 doe's feed around me all morning on all the acorns dropping around me. They finally fed off and I ended up getting down around 10:30am to look around a little. I had not been in this area since I had did some scouting before the season began. Once I was down I found several fresh rubs and scrapes and plenty of other deer sign so I decided to exit the area and come back the next morning.
Back to Friday morning and the cool air...
Once I made it to my pine and climbed up it was already breaking daylight and I quickly pulled my bow up and prepared myself. I had just finished putting on my leafy jacket when I notice movement in some broom sage. It the early morning light I could see it was a big doe coming my way. She ended up walking right to the bottom of my tree, looked up at me and then walked back out into the opening then bounded off a few feet and stopped. Next I see another deer coming and it is a smaller doe who looks back behind her and then turns around and runs up to the larger doe. A few seconds later I hear what ever deer hunter wants to hear and the is a buck grunting.
Instead of following the doe's up the same trail they came down which was about 25 yards from me. He is paralleling then on a trail right at 40 yards but in the wide open. I quickly see his "stud" like walking and his rack and then he stops to feed under a oak and I decided it was now or never. At the shot he lunged forward and spun to the left. I saw the arrow hit and knew it hit a little further back but looked like a good hit. He ran about 30 yards then stopped, stuck his tail straight up and was gone.
I waited about 45 mins and couldn't take it anymore and had to see my arrow. When I examined my arrow it had some blood on the fletchings but there was also a lot of white hair. My heart sunk right then and knew it was either white hair from the exit hole or I hit him low in the pouch. My father was on a stand not to far away so I went over and told him what happened. Over the years I have learned when to start tracking and deer and when to wait him out and this would have been one to wait. I left my arrow in the ground and just wanted to see what the blood trail looked like and I found the first blood about 30 yards away where he had stopped. There was a lot of blood and no sign of a pounch hit and blood was great for the first 100 yards.
Fast forward to dark 30....
We had spent all day tracking this deer and jumping him 3 times even and each time we would stop for 1-2 hours only to jump him again. He even circled around us and ran almost back to where it all began. So at dark we were worn out and loosing our minds and decided to give him the night to die and come back in the morning. And my father and I knew we should have backed out earlier that morning and come back for him.
Saturday morning...
Dad, I and Daisy Mae made it to our the last blood spot and after putting Daisy on the blood she had a hard time at first but we soon found some more blood and stomach matter. Daisy works very slow and with the trail being cold she would stay on it for 50 ft then make a circle and pick it up again. I carried a small spray bottle of Peroxide was able to find small spots of blood as we went along to make sure she was on the trail. Finally after about 4 hours of slow tracking and thick vines and crap she took us right to him. We didn't even see him until we were 15 feet from him.
The shot was very slow and basically gave him a C-section and a lot of his guts were hanging out of his body. On top of that somehow the arrow went through his leg on the opposite side. During half of the tracking we had started to find stomach matter and in it was whole corn no doubt from some of the private property in the area. At times that corn was the only way we knew which direction he went. I don't ever want another tracking job like that again!
Just glad I was able to recover him and know how he ended up.
Great story. Very cool you put in the time to recover the deer. What does the peroxide do? I am not sure I have heard about that.
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