wildlands

First off let me say congrats to Addison Strzalka from Tampa Florida. Addison was brought up to Georgia by his grandfather to hunt. He took a nice 8 pointer the hard way. Offically by the gps our tracking job took us over 2.02 miles. The deer was shoot around 9:00 amand I did not get to start tracking until 2:30 this afternoon. The guide at Flanders Farm had tracked the deer about 1/2 mile down into the woods to a dry creek channel. He thought he heard the deer moving out in front of him so they backed out, called me and waited. ( A long wait for young Addison) My tracking dog "Baby" worked out the marked line just perfectly. When we got to the end of the marked trail she just keep going down this drain for more than 1/4 mile before turning and coming out. She continued working across 2 creeks and several woods roads, a gas line and a fod plot. The guide was getting worried because the deer was heading to the property line were we would have to stop tracking. When the deer hit the road going down the property line he turned and went down it for about 150 yards before turning back into the property. It was really hard to determine were the deer was hit because we would have blood up high then only down low. Then it looked like it was on bothe sides of the trail. Since we had plenty of day light I decided we would just continue tracking until we either came up on the deer or ran out of light. The more we tracked the more obveous it was that this deer was hit in the leg. We just hoped to catch up to him in a clearing were another shot could be had. Then just as things looked up no blood for about 125 yards across some very dry broom straw. This was baffaling since he had been bleeding real good and we expected to dee some good sigh in th edry grass. But as soon as we got across we picked up a drop or 2 thenit start more frequently and was fresh. We eventually jumped the deer beded down and the guide was able to make the finishing shot. As you will see by the pictures this deer would have gone on for a long time before recovering or subcoming to infection with how he was hit in the leg. The only chance of recovery was how we did it by pushing until we caught up to him.