My dad and I were walking back to one of our ladder stands on Sunday to take it down for the year. We happened to come across a blood trail in the fresh snow that had fallen overnight. We began following it trying to figure out where it was headed. It was certainly an easy trail to follow, since there was a fair amount of blood. After 75 yds or so, my dad saw a deer take off running. It was a doe and it turned out to be the deer that was wounded. She was running good yet but she' d lost alot of blood by now. What really made me mad was that no one was tracking her. There wasn' t even anyone else in the woods at that time.

We figured she must have been hit in the upper leg. I' m almost positive this deer suffered a fatal hit, based on the amount of blood lost. Since we didn' t have any weapons in hand, we gave up the tracking job. I really hate to see a deer suffer like that, especially since no one was putting in an effort to find her. What would you guys do in this situation? Keep tracking, or let her go?

well if you saw her, then she still needed time to bleed to death, so i think you did the right thing byletting her go, especially without weapons.

I couldn' t just leave it. I would go back and track it, but that is just me.

I have tracked and even found other people deer that they have wounded. But never just assume that a bleeding deer is caused by a hunter. There are other preditors that can wound deer.

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I am with Navy. After jumping her I would have back trailed her to see where the wound occured at and what the circumstances were. Depending on what I found I would have gone back later and took up her trail again. Thats just me I dont like to see an animal go un-recovered no matter who made the shot. JMO

I agree, try backtracking and find out what happened. Maybe the hunter knew it was a marginal hit and was letting it bed down before tracking.

Either way go back and look for her, good experience if nothing else.