Well, while hanging a few new stands last week I was reminded of a very important point -- check carefully for poison ivy on or around the tree. Got it real bad on my face and arms. No fun. If you aren't sure what it looks like, find out before heading to the trees.

Heres is one that will help you when bloodtrailing at night. I posted it here a few years ago and have seen several others post how well it works for them since then. It is an old trick that we used for catfishing and now use it when trailing at night while using lanterns. Take a piece of aluminum foil and wrap it around the back half of the lantern globe. When you are bloodtrailing it will keep the light out of your eyes and really illuminate the blood in front of you. It also seems to cut down on the lantern heat on you on those warm early season nights. It really works well.

Leaves of three.......let it be..........

In regards to using a lantern for blood tracking...I heard along time ago that blood will glow under lantern light. Is this true?

5. I knew I would think of something...on this same line. Take orange surveyor tape with you for tracking. Start by marking where the animal was standing when you shot it and mark the blood trail. This way you can tell which way the animal was running. This will help if you loose the trail. If you do loose the trail you want to start at the last blood spot and start circling out till you find more blood.

That's probably because the ones you wore were tight and cut off circulation. Refer to my post on page 7. You need the latex gloves to be loose to have heat retention.

Get a cheap retractable dog leash of 25ft. length to retrieve your gear intoyour treestand. Its cheap and effective. No tangles. I heard that one on this site. Second one is, get your wife to buy the scent free tampons.

OK. Now that makes sense. Duh. Sometimes I have to laugh at myself. Yes, they were the tight fitting ones and I'm sure that's what the problem was. Thanks. I'll have to try that again.

A blue lens on your flashlight also works great for blood-trailing!

I use the panty hose thing until last year when I bought a pair of ingenious socks from cabelas, guys these socks are worth every penny. They are about 15 bucks. The tampon thing i use every year but make sure it's unscented. My best tip is make sure you leave all your tracking equiptment back at the truck when you bowhunt, not only will it give the animal time to die it will let you gather your thought and make a game plan. Also change your clothes when you get back to the truck, don't want to get blood on your scent-lok or good hunting clothes. It also makes you take only the nessessary gear with you, knife , flashlight, gloves etc. Don't want to be weighted down, you have a deer to drag still. When tracking sometimes less is more, People I mean, the more you have the better chance of a screw up. I thing that I have found out over the years about tracking is that blue lights red lights or any color of light other than soft white will only make the tracking harder. Blue lights make the blood look like tar, with dirt in the back ground and dew on the ground it makes for a hard track, because anything wet will look like tar. We spend most of out lives around soft white light bulbs, in our home, at work just about everywhere, our eyes have been trained to distinguish color with that type of light since we were little. When looking for little specks of blood in the woods, soft white color in a flashlight will out perform any other, because we are used to it. Great tips so far keep it up guys and gals.

Hard to believe nobody has mentioned peroxide. We carry a small spray bottle of it in our pack and then if we have a question as to a red spot on a leaf, etc. we just spray a small amount of the peroxide on it. If it's blood it foams. We also use marking tape to give help us keep track of the anysign we do find.