My buddy shot a good buck this weekend and from what I saw it looked and sounded like a great shot. That was until we spent over 8 hours and 2 miles of some serious hard effort of tracking only to loose him in unfamiliar territory and less than perfect tracking conditions. Just curious on some stories or encounters you all have had.

Sounds like if you had of pulled out and gone back after a few hours or the next morning you would have stood a better chance of finding the deer.

Tracking downed game is almost as exciting as shooting. I thoroughly enjoy tracking game, even if its to help someone else out. I think its the need to bring closure to the hunt and harvest the animal that makes it enjoyable. Coming up empty-handed is very frustrating. Especially after having decent blood then having it diminish to nothing. Last year I got a call from a friend that he hit a real nice buck in archery and wanted an extra hand tracking. So I headed over, and managed to pick up on new blood to extend our tracking efforts further. What started out to be a promising blood trail I couldn't imagine not finding it. After hours and hours of searching, andcircling we just couldn't find any more blood or sign of the deer and this was afterabout 150-200yds of a blood trail. The worst feeling is when you decide to give up knowing how it started and not ending up grabbing the horns.

Timbercuiser, if there is one thing I have learned over the 20+ years I have been at this it is you always need to give the game time, we actually backed out and gave him 3 hours after the shot and in my mind that was more than enough since I actually heard the bullet hit saw the buck jump like 10 feet off the ground on impact. we went in found hte trail found a spot where he stood and had tremendous amount of blood then a beed and he got up and walked off. At that point I convinced my buddy to back out and leave him for the night. Upon our return in the morning we picked up the trail went half more or so found two more beds where he laid down and coyotes bumped him, he actually went full circle back near the original bed past where we shot him and continued for a couple miles across a series of 200+ acres corn and bean fields wooded hedgrows etc. across a road nad into a brushlot where we lost him. Not only was the trail almost impossible to follow but with the insane distance he covered we certainly gave it a 200% effort and I feel good about that just witha disappointing end but that's part of the game sometimes.

I feel the same way.

Ruger I see your from Bama, I'm going to be heading down for a fist time hunt down there in Eufala at the end of Jan. My buddies have been going do for 4-5 year and have a blast so I'm looking forward to it. You ever hunt that area?

I haven't hunted Eufala but I have hunted the management are about 20 minutes away. Its some good hunting up there I have a few friends with leases in Eufala and they see plenty of deer. Are you hunting private or public land?

All private, my buddy and his friends have hooked up with a couple local farmers and have thousands of acres of farm and old logging ground they have access to. The land owners use the fees they pay to install stands and food plots.They get some decent deer and have been bugging me to go down for years figured I would give it a ry, big change from NY to there, should be fun.

The worst night of tracking i have ever had, is also the most memroable. I was bowhunting during the rut, and shot a nice 8pt, because he was rutting so hard he started trotting again right when i released the arrow. Gut shot him. Let him sit for about 6hrs. Came back and started tracking him.

Across someones yard down a ridge up another one and into a creek bottom. And there he was staring at us and are flashlights. He ran, we sat. An hour later when it started to snow sowe figured we give another go. Walking through, following what we could my friend stepped on him, and yep he jumped up and ran into the creek. My otherfriend jumped into the creek with his knife and grabbed the buck by his rack as he was trying to swim and cut his throat and killed the buck as the buck started dragging him down the bank. Absolutley crazy!! needless to say when my friends adrenaline came down he was shaking pretty bad. I swear i heard horror movie music playing. Either way we got the deer out of there, but we still talk about that night.