In the morning of October 23 we received a call from a hunter who shot a deer the previous evening at 5:30 pm. He was sure that the deer was gut shot. We started to track at 10:30 am and John handled a two-year-old Bernie. When Bernie had problems with carrying the line, we went back to the car and got more experienced Billy. Billy found a deer but unfortunately coyotes got there first.
This morning we got a call from a hunter located 16 miles from our place. He gut shot a deer yesterday at 5:30 pm. He went to the hit site this morning and could not find his buck. There was light grey hair at the hit site and the recovered arrow indeed confirmed that the deer was gut shot.
John starting the line with Bernie.
It was a warm day, temperature around 70 degrees, and overcast sky.
It was a warm day, temperature around 70 degrees, and overcast sky.
As we followed the trail, we found numerous spots of blood.
The leaves on the ground were also red so it took some effort to actually see the blood.
Then we saw quite a bit of blood on this birch trunk (fingers indicating the direction of track).
Bernie showed a good desire to track but he was too fast and not very focused. It was good to have a long blood trail to work with so we could actually evaluate Bernie's work as we were sure of where the deer went.
The deer went into patches of golden rod.
We could see that the deer was bleeding badly and we thought that we should be able to recover him.
Occasionally we marked blood signs with orange tape so we could get back to the marked places if we needed to.
Bernie was pulling ahead, and he was not very accurate. When we ran out of blood line, we did not have much confidence about whether Bernie was on the right track. We searched and searched but could not see more blood. After one hour we decided to take Bernie back to the car and bring more experienced Billy.
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