I cringe everytime I hear someone telling a story about deer hunting and they say, I looked through the scope and all I could see was brown so I pulled the trigger... with a big satisfied grin on their face. What that tells me is the person had no idea where he was aiming on that animal. Granted because of the scope issue he might have been close to the deer, but by no means was he in a position to shoot the deer.

There are lots of factors that go into harvesting and recovery of a deer. If we do our part right, we make it look simple. If not, we are in for a long day and sometimes night, in the woods.

I discovered by accident that I owned a secret weapon in finding wounded deer. I was out grouse hunting one day with my black labrador when I came across some bow hunters that had been trying to find a HUGE buck for over a day. They showed me the blood trail and as I was looking at the trail my dog walked up, sniffed the spot and stared me right in the eye. So I told him to go get it. Just a few minutes later the dog was standing over that HUGE buck. It weighed 235 pounds gutted. The person's right through the heart shot with his bow was a little farther back, through the liver.