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.

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.

The picture shows John putting a tracking collar on Billy.

It was not an easy task for Billy to track through the terrain already trampled by three people and one dog. I was getting a bit discouraged as we could not find more blood and advance the trail. I could not believe that the deer, which was bleeding so much, all of sudden would stop leaving any blood behind.

While John was working with Billy, the hunter and I decided to look a bit to the right of the track - the only direction not explored yet. We were successful and found more blood at the edge of another golden rod field.

We marked the blood and called John with Billy. This time we were very optimistic about finding this buck. This new blood trail was not disturbed by us or another dog and in the very thick cover Billy should not have problems with following it. We were right! Now Billy was pulling with great strength and acted very sure of himself.

Forty yards later (and two hours from the start with Bernie) we found the deer. It was a very sad site as unfortunately coyotes got there first! The damage was severe. Another lesson that these days in our area a hunter risks losing a wounded or dead deer to coyotes if he chooses not to track at night.

Billy got his reward by tugging a deer...

...and getting a piece of venison.

Good boy Billy!