When do you give up on the track?
 

This questions stems from a small buck I lost last year (would have been first with bow). Long story short...didn't get a pass through, using muzzy 4 blades, 40yard shot that wasn't ideal. (I later spend several hours re-looking at deer anatomies online...one lung was done for, and the second shouldn've had an inch or two of arrow in it).

Anyways, he ran into a small patch of woods (small being about 20 acres..he would've had to cross an elevated highway otherwise). I waited an hour...then found only some cut hair and a few spots of blood about about 20 yards fromt the hit (still in a open field) and then two small spots were he jumped a ditch into the woods.

Looked for about an hour for the next sign and eventual resorted to 'combing' twenty acres the best I could. (another two hours of hiking around) a called it quits. Now granted, if I had worked three hours and still was still making slow progress on a trail you couldn't have torn me off it...it would've been my first buck with a bow.

At what point do you guys call it quits? Would you have rested awhile and then recombed? We want 'em bad, and we owe it to them if we take the shot...but when do you rack it up to "experience" and "better luck next time".

RE: When do you give up on the track?
 

when you exhausted all resources and KNOW you did all you could...looseing deer happens. but your right...we want em and we owe it to them to find them. when i know i did all i could and to the best of all possibilities ill feel a little better about giving up. never feel GOOD about it...but when you reach the point you know you did what you could you kinda just know...

RE: When do you give up on the track?
 

I hit a nice buck on Friday night, my post about it is on right now, and I still can't find it after 2.5 days of searching with friends and even my dog. I am going back later in the week to look for buzzards. I am pissed, but don't know what else to do. I gave up at dark on Sunday.

RE: When do you give up on the track?
 

I would have looked more. Yes, I would have rested and then got back to it and looked again. I would also recruit some help and formeda search line right through that 20 acres. You may walked past and never seen it because you were trying to cover too much land on your own. I lost a nice buck last year and to this day it still bothers me what happened to that deer.

RE: When do you give up on the track?
 

Being it was your first I can imagine all the rookie mistakes you probably made in searching... not watching the deer as he ran, like going to fast, expecting too much blood, etc etc. I sure would have looked along that highway really well too.Going up and going down he would have leaked. Not knowing where you hit and all it's hard to say, butI would expect the deer was down within a couple hundred yards. If you for sure toasted one lung and got penetration into the other I'd even expect maybe sooner. It's hard to say without being there. I do expect you gave up too soon. I agree you should have enlisted some help from someone that's been there and done that. I've found deer before by just sitting back and surveying the lay of the land and the vegetation and deciding where I'd go if I were a deer. I found a deer one time for a guy in Georgia. He was a member of a dog hunting club. The deer had come right out onto the pavement, made a U turn and the guy hit him with buckshot. For some reason their dogs couldn't pick him up again. About 10 guys in the dog gang left for the next run after a quick look around, but the guy stuck around to satisfy himself. About an hour later I found a speck of blood 100 yards from where he last saw the deer. Another half hour revealed nothing. I stood there talking to him and said, look over there, it's just a little thicker underbrush in the big pines there. It looks like it slopes off. I walked straight to the buck, dead as a doornail laying at the bottom of a wash out in the red Georgia clay. The place just looked right to me. The guy had no knife so I gutted the deer for him and helped him drag it the 400 yards back to the road. About the time we got to the road the rest of the gang came looking for him. They were shocked we'd found it. He said "We" didn't, this damn Yankee birddog did. The guy offered me everything but $ez with his daughter. I was proud of him for sticking it out when all his friends said give it up. I just decided to keep him company and see if I could help. He was so positive he'd hit the deer good. The buckshot just didn't leak a lot of blood. The deer had 2 pellets in his chest cavity and one in his neck.

RE: When do you give up on the track?
 

When I'm standing over a dead critter.

RE: When do you give up on the track?
 

It all depends on the situation, but you'll know when you're done.

After you know that you've done everything you can to try and recover your animal.

RE: When do you give up on the track?
 

I have to agree with davemill.

The doe I shot was not a stellar shot, she turn into the arrow as I fired, I told myself not to shoot, but I did. I watch where the arrow hit(liver, I was right). As she took off threw the corn I watch the corn. The corn stop moving about 60 yds from my stand. I marked the spot, sat in my stand for two hours, climbed down went in changed clothes and statred the search. Took me about 5 mins to find blood where I last saw her, another 5 to find her.

If I did not watcher her, and know where I hit her, it would have been a tough track.

There where three spots of blood from where I shot here, and where I last saw her and picked up the trail. I know this because I had to go find my arrow, I did not want the farmer to run over it with his combine. It fell out about 30 yds from my stand.

RE: When do you give up on the track?
 

Davidmil- he said he got one lung and the other was probably hit. You don't have to point out that he made "the rookie mistakes," he already knows that. But I do agree on the looking along the highway. Sometimes those higher lung shots do not bleed much at all, so it makes for a tough find.

RE: When do you give up on the track?
 

You look until you can't look anymore. What I will add it that your deer never went to waste. All the other creatures had one heck of a meal.;)

RE: When do you give up on the track?
 

I think it depends on what kind of hit it was. If all signs point to a bad, non-lethal hit (i.e. front leg muscle hit, very low in the brisket), then I wouldn't spend days looking for that deer. Most of the time, deer are going to survive those marginal hits, so if you lose the blood trail, comb the area and come up with nothing, it's probably still alive and long gone.

However, if you are pretty sure you made a more solid hit (one lung or a little far back, etc.) then I would stick with it until you find the deer or are unable to keep searching. One example- last year my buddy hit a deer with what he thought was a perfect hit- turns out that it was probably a 1 lung shot due to the steep angle. He made the mistake of searching too quickly instead of letting it bed down and die. Long story short, we tracked the deer for over 400 yards through a swamp into the night. We finally lost the blood trail and couldn't figure out which way he went. My buddy decided to give up and go home. Another buddy found the carcass of the deer (we knew it was the same one because of the size & shape of the rack) several weeks later during gun season- he found it less than 100 yards from where we had stopped searching. If my buddy had come back in the daylight the next morning, there would have been a very good chance of finding it. Moral of the story- keep looking!

RE: When do you give up on the track?
 

No doubt I made mistakes...but I did get one lung for sure (and it was a high lung hit). Anyways it doesn't matter, its long history and I've lost all the sleep I'm going to lose over it. I just didn't know how you guys approached a situation like that 'cause its frustrating as all get out. Personally I thought I was doing pretty good to find the trail I did. I little tuff or hair (without blood on it, but it had been 'cut' not just pulled or rubbed off) and those two little areas of blood had about 3 or 4 bb sized blood spots...that's it!! Really confused be because all the other deer I've shot with bow may not have been gushers but left enough of a trail anybody could've followed as long as they took there time and kept going back the last mark.

Oh well, thanks guys.

EDIT: Forgot to mention I did try to get my buddies to help...dad's not much of a hunter and he was out of town. One of my buddies was busy on his own hunt and the other was working. It was an evening hunt and he usually closes up the feed store/gas station. I bet they wished they had helped me...cause they had to get tired of my brooding about it for the better part of the holiday break.:D

RE: When do you give up on the track?
 

I shot a doe yesterday as posted today. Didnt have a complete pass through and the shot was high and back. I looked for 3 1/2 hours before we jumped her out of her bed. Now this was a mistake on our part. even though it was 3 1/2 hours later we should have waited longer. We waited 3 more hours and took up the search again and two hours after that we still hadnt found her. Nor did we find any more blood. I gave up the search I kinda feel like maybe there is a chance that she could make it through it but I dont know. I am very disappointed in myself. Like what was said before we owe it to the animals to make a good shot and an effort to recover them. I just dont know what I else to do.

RE: When do you give up on the track?
 

I shot a 4 pointer yesterday in the rain and we searched for over 2 hours in the dark before we had to give up. It crossed a fence onto the neighbors place and we found a lot of blood but we lost the trail after about 100 yards and searched a area over 400 yards in all directions but couldn't find anymore blood. With the rain it was washing the blood away and we had trouble seeing where it ran. We've crawled around on our hands and knees before looking for deer and hogs and we normally can find them within 200 yards max. Though sometimes you just can't find them.

RE: When do you give up on the track?
 

I've lost one deer, a doe, 4 seasons ago....it was a marginal shot with a crossbow, I held too high I think.....anyway I spent 7 hours looking between that night and the next couple of days but never found her....felt really bad about it. But one lesson I learned from that was not to take chances with a mariginal shot, I owe them that I think......now when I release or pull the trigger I only do it when I feel sure of the shot.....

RE: When do you give up on the track?
 

Well,

(1) I would have made a clean kill shot so I wouldn't have so much trouble tracking a deer. If I wouldn't have had the shoot I wouldn't have taken it

(2) I'll give up when I finally find it. I've been on my hands and knees in ankle high water in the winter searching for blood. One of my idiot land leasers (who is no longer welcomed on the land) shot a doe with a slug 135 yards away. He calls me in the middle of the night. We search and search until daylight the next morning only to find nothing, no blood no deer no anything. I couldn't tell you if he really did hit it. I never seen any blood.

RE: When do you give up on the track?
 

Even with a clean shot they don't drop in their tracks. I've had them run over 150 yards with no lungs left. I shot a doe with a rifle a few years ago and there was pieces of lung on the tree behind where she was standing and she still ran 150 yards. When we cleaned her her lungs were complete mush.