Deer blood trail

[Desk Jockey]

That sucks. Losing one is the worst feeling.

for future reference and what it is worth I had a bad blood trail on a deer. It was a fairly high angle downward arrow shot that ended up a little fryer back than I was aiming. the exit went thru the diaphragm and the exit hole plugged with guts.

i waited an hour and then set out. I had a 30 yard blood trail and then zilch.

North east forest With decent leaf litter. I was able to follow the trail based on disturbances in the leaf litter. He started out really tearing through the woods which was easy to find, then he rallied, which was harder to follow and then he must have started to struggle. His hooves were dragging and making skids in the leaves. I found him piled up about 250 yards from where I shot him.

I am no Daniel Boone so don’t really have a lot of experience tracking animals like that and I am not sure it wasn’t just luck, but I was able to trace a trail far more easily than I would have ever expected, so I guess it might be worth a try next time

 

[lane44]

I really appreciate all the advice guys, hopefully I'll be able to find him.

 

[AKG]

Low quartering to shot with white hairs, could be brisket as mentioned or a low gut shot (exit). I was sitting with my wife this fall, she shot at a buck at first light. I was ducked out of the way and didn't see the shot. She didn't see her arrow and the deer didn't kick and she thought she missed. The buck trotted off about 70 yards and stood there for a minute then trotted across a been field to where we couldn't see it any longer. After another hour we got down and I found blood. Tracked it across the beans with a real spotty blood trail, bright red blood by the way. When we got within 100 yards of the next treeline I saw a handful of deer spook including a buck of the right size that was moving pretty slow. We backed off at that point and I returned at 2 pm (6.5 hours after shot) to where we saw the buck and found it had bedded before we spooked it. I tracked for another 250 yards and found another empty bed and then proceeded to track that deer for 1/2 mile serving around standing corn and grassy swales until I lost blood and couldn't pick the trail back up just before dark. Went out the next day and we found that buck laying 200 yards from where I lost trail the night before and straight line 600 yards from where it was initially shot. Low shot just behind ribs and it passed through the stomach a couple inches above the bottom of the deer. I didn't do a thorough investigation of the the damage as the wound area was pretty strong smelling by that point. Most meat was salvaged.

 

[Somthingoriginal]

If it was my biggest deer ever I'd keep looking. I would think buzzards would indicate a dead animal. I'd also get a dog, any dog should naturally be interested in a dead deer that you might be overlooking.

 

[Wellsdw]

Looking at your pictures you a have two distinct pics in there that indicate potential muscle hit. One is blood that indicates deer was running hard or jumping. Another pic indicates it was standing still (trying to figure out wth just happened) which left a good amount of blood. If you called me for the dog I’d probably still come out, but doubtful on recovery. “Closure track” where in nc are you located just curious?

 

[fwafwow]

It may be too late for this input to matter, but I was involved in a few deer trackings this season. We didn't recover all of them, but for those we did - if there was an easy way for the deer to go (using a trail, going downhill, or both), that is how the deer went.

 

[MJB]

The worst thing you can do after a shot is push it. With his adrenaline going after the shot blood pumping you want him laying down and you do not want to push him for many hours so that the adrenaline goes out and he bleeds out. If you keep pushing them the adrenaline just keeps kicking in and keeps kicking in and he goes further and further and further.

My Jagdterriers are great blood/trackers this is one reason I got one 17yrs ago.

 

[fwafwow]

Any update OP?

 

[lane44]

I looked again through most of the reeds I think he would have layed down in and I didn't find him at all so he might still be kicking on along

 

[TSAMP]

If you have trail cameras and this is a buck you have any experience with it can be helpful to stick a few around the area. A friend did that earlier this fall successfully to confirm a non fatal shot.

 

[lane44]

I'm gonna put my cameras back out and keep an eye on them to see if he pops back up

 

[lane44]

I really appreciate all you guy's advice and help

 

[Texasbuckeye]

Couple of things i did that really helped on a recent tough track we had on my place that helped direct us:
1. Finding blood is important, but when it goes to nothing, before i go forward i squat down and look around at the deer level and see if there is a more clear path where a gimp leg dragged, where a deer might have bounced off a tree limb/weed/bush or anything thay can help direct the search,
2. When i cant see anything or there are multiple trails, i start a fan search looking for blood and i fan out in a near 180 degree fan and go slow and methodical.
3. Our deer came to a clearing (about 25 feet wide by easily 50 feet long) with grass that should have been easy to see blood but there was none at all in the clearing that i found, so i searched hard and when i failed that i went to the edges of the clearing and looked closely at the edge brush and found a single speck of blood on a single blade of high grass….the next blood we found (after calling in my son and son in law) was about 25 feet from that, but without looking at the edge i would have never seen that speck and would have had no ide where that deer went as It went off trail where there were at least three trails it could have followed,
4 this deer went downhill and toward a creek, and we found better and better blood the further we went until we got just before the creek, good blood on a shrub along a definite trail (the deer rejoined this trail) that crossed the creek with good fresh tracks on the other side. We went across and looked for any sign and found zero. Made no sense. So then we fanned out and looked along the creek edges and found no sign, bo blood. We searched in some thick brush right next to where we found blood last to no avail. Nothing made sense. We found zero blood or sugn,
5. I was ready to give up, we were several hours into this track and zero direction of where to go, but my son said lets go back across the creek and look again, so we started back toward where i crossed. Since i knew i looked very closely along this bank and in this direction i was walking with my head up and not really looking down at all (more out of dispair than anything) and as i got closer to the crossing i saw the deer laying on an embankment that was shielded from the opposite side and easily missed if looking down and not taking in the whole view. The doe went at least 40 yards along the close edge of the creek without a single drop of blood (we went back and looked) and as she tried to go back up the embankment she just fell over. There was some blood right where she went up the embankment but that was it. Overall, an easy 5-600 yard track, and one of the toughest i have done.

Doe was shot aimilar to what you stated, about 60-70 yards quartering to, and the deer bolted as you described. She was hit a little far back and ended up hitting diaphragm on the entrance and nicked liver and hit stomach. The shot was taken by my nephew and the rifle was a 22-250 which would have heen fine with a good shot, but i chose rhat caliber due him recently breaking his shooting hand and just being out if his cast he was concerned about recoil.
Anyway, theres lessons in that story, sorry its long. I think we all learned something on that track, first and foremost is dont let a newby nephew run ahead along the blood trail because he will disrupt all the sign even when you tell him not to shuffle his feet along the ground!

 

[Molon Labe]

First i will start off with my guess: I think you are right handed. You pulled a bit hard on the shot and therefore impact was low to the right. I'm thinking the hit was through the front right leg low and never hit chest cavity or barely grazed the bottom of the chest just behind the brisket.

Here is how I arrived at that guess:

Large clump of white hair is a low hit...if it was coarse with thicker tips you are up front a bit more but would have had some short coarse brown/darker hair from front brisket area...if its thin and longer then you are back a little bit. Larger amount of hair will indicate bullet moved across more surface area and therefore lower odds for poking through diaphragm. My guess is the white hair you found was thin and short (around 1" and there was a little bit of tan hair with it that was also short and thinner. This would indicate a leg hit. Did you find any bone fragments?

The blood trail indicates muscle hit. The fact the blood trail ended fairly quickly seems to indicate that your bullet did not enter the chest cavity. Low chest cavity hit would have had more blood for a longer period because the deer was moving fast and there wasnt a chance for clotting or chunks to plug the entrance/exits.

I would still spend a lot of time looking for the deer. Sometimes wounds can go bad for a deer and they will get infected...get a fever and be in a bad state of mind. When they are fevered up and almost hallucinating they are an easy target for predators. Coyotes will have no problem grouping up and finishing off a buck that is not mentally sharp and missing one of his wheels.

How old was the deer? If it was a mature buck with a bit more weight to him i would spend more time looking at a higher elevation than you shot him. Deer will have a tendency to go uphill with a broken front leg and downhill with a broken back leg. Broken front leg on a buck they will run for a while but then want to bed up in a spot they can see their back track and still have an easy escape route to cover. I would start my search about 200-300 yards from point of impact on a knob that has a decent vantage point but not a lot of cover. Look for a bigger bed that will have a couple tiny spots of blood in it. He will get up a few times and rebed (most likely you bumped him though) but if you can find that bed you can look under the leaves and diagnose your hit better looking at the disturbance in the dirt. Look for a very deep front left elbow divot. If there is not a second one you can then assume front right leg impact.

It would also be helpful to know what type of bullet and load you were shooting.

I think the buzzards are a false alarm. They wouldn't have been on the deer that quick.