Describe the blood trails you get. Heavy blood with lots of spray? Just a few drops here and there? What color is the blood? Bright red? Pink and bubbly? Dark maroon? When you recover the arrow, look at the blood that coats it. If you see bits of green and brown on it and the arrow stinks, you got paunch.

These are all signs you have to read before you begin tracking.

A liver (dark maroon blood) or paunch shot deer needs several hours before you start tracking. If you're tracking and find a place where the deer has bedded and left a lot of blood, then back off and wait a few more hours. You spooked it out of that bed, but it'll bed down again soon and that's where you'll findthe deerif you don't push it.

A trail with pink and bubbly blood means you got lungs and it shouldn't be more than 200 yards, at the very most.

Bright red with lots of spray usually means heart or a major artery. The deer will often run hard till it bleeds out and drops, and it can cover some ground, especially if it's spooked.

Bright red blood that starts out heavyand with a lotof blood smeared (not sprayed) on thebrushbut rapidly dwindles to a few drops here and there is usually a muscle wound. But it can also mean a high lung shot where the surface blood vessels bleed out on the ground, but the internal blood collects inside the body cavity.

After the shot, stay still and quiet. A lot of the time the deer doesn't know what happened to it and it'll stop to look, sniff and listen to check if it's being chased. When it knows it's safe, it'll calm right down and probably drop right there.If you whoop and holler like a madman, you'll spook the deer and it'll run it's legs off before it drops. No sense in making sure you're gonna have a long blood trail to follow.