Took two buds to my hunting camp. Hunted from Sunday afternoon until yesteday afternoon. Tons of deer seen. If we could hit worth a darn we'd have hung 9 in the cooler. As it turned out we hung 3.

Fortunately 5 of the others were clean misses. One however not so good .... a gut shot, described as a fine 8 pt. Arrow was covered with "greyish". I figured small intestine hit. No blood.

We let him alone for about 6-7 hours and then took my pooch into see if we could find a trail. Found no blood. No "juices" of any kind. Mojo lost interest after about 200 yards. So we backed out.

Over the next 3 days we ended up thorougly double grid searching an area of about 1/2 mile by 1/2 mile. Nada. It was 80F +/- in the afternoons ... so we expected maybe buzzards might show up 4th. or 5 th. day. Nada. He was with another fine 8 pt. and I suspect that when they hauled out of there the wounded buck ran with his buddy until he just could not go anymore .... and who knows how far that was. Could be a mile before laying down.

One guy killed "dirt" three times. I can't say much. I clean missed (shot over the backs) two fat does at about 30-35 yards.

The guy that gut shot the 8 pt. was sick about it. He did kill a good 165#, 8 pt. and a nice 112# doe. We used Mojo to find the two that he killed. The p.m. killed buck would have been a tough track in the dark because of the route that he took and the fact that we saw only one blood spot on the ground. He was hit pretty good and made it only about 200 yards before piling up. The doe tracking was just for "practice" for Mojo. It fell within 75 yards after being double lunged.

I did kill a young 80# doe Friday, middle of the day. Had to get the dog too. I thought I had hit her pretty good, but turned out the broadhead caught the liver and then exited through one lung. I hit a tad far back than I had "aimed". I went back to camp got Mojo ... about a hour later I was dragging. Mojo hit the trail right where I had found the bloody bolt and was on a good blood trail within 75 yards. She was down about 125 yards away. As as it would be, all down hill !

Main thing is that we had great fun on a much needed break from work !

Sounds like you had a good time. If I track deer its all on my own, no dog. Have only had to ever track one deer, the rest just stopped in their tracks. Now that I'm bowhunting there will be plenty of time to track.

elmoughler - It has been amazing to me how handy a blood tracking dog can be, and has been for me. I have had at least one tracker now since 1998. While I am 100% certain we three men, all being long time experienced deer hunters, would have found the 8 pt. that same evening, having Mojo to track it for us turned what might have been an hour or more of difficult tracking into about 15 minutes. Like I said none of us saw one single drop of blood other than one spot about the size of a quarter. A tracking dog can track blood field breath mist, minute amounts that might be over looked and frankly I am certain that Mojo has a few times gone straight to a downed deer strickly on the scent of the bloody wound. He could not locate the gut shot buck because there was no blood trail for him to follow. I have intentionally trained him to not track "deer scent" ... but instead to only track "deer blood".