A *Rant* on tracking deer
 

When to track is important. We've all heard the caution against pushing a wounded deer. And many of us have experienced it, and possibly lost one because of it, ourselves.

However, when all signs point to a good shot.... it's time to track!

I'm on several facebook hunting pages that get allot of traffic this time of the year. Seems like every other thread right now is "Hit one, decided to back out until morning.".....

That's a great idea, when it's 40DEG out. But when the low for the night is 63 DEG backing out until mornings is just as bad as loosing the deer. Even so, if you think the shot is bad, I understand backing out. But allot of these guys are saying "Shot looked good, arrows covered in blood, but I didn't see it drop so I backed out until morning" There's even two posts on there this morning of people who heard the deer drop, but it was out of sight... So to avoid pushing it they backed out.

Just a rant to say this: Take account of everything that happened. If the shot looked good, if it felt good, if you have a blood covered arrow,if you have a blood trail, if everything is pointing towards a dead deer, then wait 30 minutes and GET ON THE TRAIL and find your deer before they coyotes do or before the meat spoils.

It almost seems like "Backing out until morning" is a right of passeage, or something they need to do. Maybe because that's what you see on every Deer hunting TV show? Who knows.... But listen to your sign and react accordingly. Backing out and wasting a deer is pretty much the same as losing one.

EDITED TO ADD:

I backed out on a poor shot 8 point one time, and found him about 50 yards away with his hole rear end eaten out. The only other time I backed out was helping a person track a big buck they gut shot. We came back in the morning and he put a second arrow in the deer and ended it. Had we bumped that buck right after he shot it we probably never would have found him.

I'm not saying you shouldn't back out if the situation requires it... But I am saying it shouldn't be the "go to" response ESPECIALLY in warmer weather or anywhere that has predators

-Jake

I could not agree more. I am guessing that a lot of the people who do this even when"all the signs point to a dead deer" are just worried about the rack and could care less about the meat

here in west central Wi if you don't go after your deer within 30 minutes a lot o times the Wolves will have it. But yes your seem right, many are now being to politically correct .

In this area if you wait until morning the coyotes will have eaten everything except for some bones and the antlers. That's why my shots are picked very carefully.




One of the places i hunt is military property: Hunters absolutely must be off the place NLT than 1 1/2 hours after sunset.

I was thinking the same thing. Valid point for antler hunters. But meat overnight in an ungutted deer is garbage.

You should only wait as long as you think it will take the deer to die.

Deer can be just as easily wasted by going after them too early or late

I have killed a bunch of deer and did lose 1 until the next morning many years ago while bow hunting. I followed the sporadic trail until almost midnight and decided it was not going to be found so I did pull out. I went back the next day and in the daylight was able to sort out the trail picking it up on the wooded side of the swamp and when I found the deer it was dead. I gutted and actually processed the deer thinking it would be OK. The meat was bad and the whole deer had to be thrown out. The shot was a liver shot and was partially due to a deer that was quartered more than I thought when I took the shot near last light. My fault for sure and that made me much more careful going forward. I seldom wait more than 10 minutes before trailing a bow shot deer. If I know the shot was in the boiler works I am right after it immediately. Almost 100% of them have been dead when I got to them.

I only gun hunt, but if I think something went wrong with the shot, I wait 3/4-1 hour. Give them time to settle in and bleed out.

Funny story about that, shot a Doe, a wisp of grass and a couple twigs between me and her, likely deflected my bullet a little. She takes off like a scalded Cat. I wait awhile, maybe an hour and start to track her, gave up after an hour and a half, was around 5 F out, I was froze. Decided I'd come back in the morning. Called my buddy to come pick me up, we double checked the blood trail, a few tiny drops, tried to make sense of the tracks, there were many. Get in his car, turn on the headlights and she was laying twenty feet behind my high seat.

I shot a doe in very cold, single digit temps a few years ago. I was confident of the shot, and with the snow, tracking conditions were ideal. I decided to take all my gear back to the truck, then head out with just my rifle, knife and drag rope to bring it in. When I got back to the truck there was a dead deer laying about 15 yards from it. I back tracked the trail and sure enough, it was that doe. It had looped around the bottom of the hill and piled up mid stride right by the truck. Those are the easy ones.


-Jake

I am in the same position hunting on a military base. They want you out of the woods and logged out of their system to go home. Our system those has an option to sign in from hunting but check out for tracking a wounded animal. Seldom do many people do that, alot wait for the following morning which has it's issues.

But overall I agree with what everyone has said here.

I think that shows the difference between a true hunter and a tourist with a gun. A true Hunter will put all reasonable effort into retrieving wounded game, it's a responsibility.

Don't get me wrong, many what I call Sunday Hunters are pretty darned good.

I actually enjoy tracking, not everybody does. I really enjoy working my Dog. My eyes are getting bad, I'm not nearly as good at it as I once was, I use my Dog more.

I think many are just lazy and put off something they don't enjoy as long as possible.

well I have a different view here>
in many places its illegal to track game that runs on to others land
so, many times I have hunted some smaller parcels where if I jumped a wounded deer even ONCE before it died, it could be on lands I could NOT recover,
I always try my best to have friendships with adjourning land owners and most places I do, but also have coup,ke places that there animal rights nuts and they will NOT let you recover even a DEAD deer, I have gone down the road of getting wardens involved, and others that known the land owners well(good relationships with them) and ended up loosing a deer
and was a pretty darn good hit, just one of them deer that RAN till it dropped and ended up un recoverable, and still stings today knowing what happened there!

I have killed hundreds of deer with all weapons, from 50 BMG down, I have seen a doe once get hit thru both front shoulders with a 750 grain soft point from a 50 bmg, and it was ON video, run over 250 yards, when we got to her you could have thrown a football thru her and NOT hit any part of her
SO I DON"T buy the "X" caliber, or shot placement(minus maybe a brain shot) will drop em ALL the time, as I seen too many cases where things didn;t work as planned

SO< some times there is a decent reason to NOT track right away.
Just saying

many hunters are NOT the best shots or trackers, so many prefer to gamble I think on waiting if they don;t see them go down that risk loosing one they cannot track if they push!

NOT all places are dog legal to track either! or do hunters have access to one that can!

I have recovered deer that had traveled well over 2 miles after being hit and NOT pushed at all, waited till the following day to HELP track them
a dead deer will be there next day or it won't
a pushed deer can be LOST just as much as one being eaten by a predator!

NOT saying wait ALL the time, but if your NOT confident in your shot or afterwards
waiting IS the better option! IMO

I have seen a doe once get hit thru both front shoulders with a 750 grain soft point from a 50 bmg, and it was ON video, run over 250 yards, when we got to her you could have thrown a football thru her and NOT hit any part of her

Are you exaggerating just a little bit ???

I had a rest malfunction several years ago. Tracked the deer for a mile or so to a property line I couldn't cross. Went to hunt a different stand 1/4 the other direction a couple days later and he was laying there a foot from the ladder.

actually NO
in the video a guy stuck his whole arm thru her making a fist and it didn't hit any flesh on the deer?, this was back in late 1990's and again it was on video ? and NO I don;t still have the video, was shot with a state arm's 50 bmg single shot bolt action rifle from a box blind off a rest!
it was maybe a 70 lb doe too, NOT a big one by any means and it RAN , it left a blood trail that looked like someone with 3 ft wide paint roller rolled a path thru the snow to her from the hit site!

just made a LOT of folks just say WOW after they seen it, as hard to imagine a deer being able to run after that hit, but it did?

I shot a deer low in the brisket 1 year. Plenty of blood. Blood on the asphalt pavement where it ran across the road to the next county. I tracked this deer all afternoon, and then again the next morning. The last drop of blood I saw was on the pavement. Then it just vanished.

I even went to the home depot & brought loppers to get through the laurel. I cut down brush, another guy helped me on his hands & knees. I was bummed out for 2 weeks. Big mature doe....

That is the reason I gave up Bow hunting for Deer. Trailed one through about a mile of Chaparral (I may be exaggerating a bit) felt like two miles, mostly on my hands and knees. It was morning and getting hot quick, the trip back dragging that sucker three feet at a time took hours, I about had a heart attack.

I agree. Each situation has it's own factors. But it general waiting 20 minutes or so should be all you need. Once in our UP I went back to my truck and put up my rifle then went to find my deer. There were already wolf tracks around it when I got there. The last time I put away my rifle I can tell you.

Same thing here with the Fox. they show up when they hear a shot. They have figured out there is likely to be a pile of offal around. Even the Ravens and Jays show up. :) Kind of like ringing the dinner bell.

All depends on where you hit the deer.

20 minutes on a gut shot assures your deer is wasted and very well could cause you to lose a liver shot deer.

Hear and/or both lungs the deer should be dead before you can even get started tracking.


I think to many people seem to think you only have 2 options
1. In the first 30 minutes
2. 12 hours later.

You never hear anybody say "wait 5 hours"

My son shot a buck last year with a crossbow. Right behind the shoulder. We found the buck, bedded in a small depression in the ground. There was blood all over its chest and its head was drooping like a drunk about to pass out. He walked around to get a better angle for a finishing shot and it bolted. We never found that buck. We looked for hours that afternoon and into the night and all day the next day. Can't explain it. But, if we would have backed out, he would be dead in the depression.

All depends on that.

When archery hunting, my general rule of thumb is to wait till my heartbeat gets back to under 80 and I am over the adrenaline rush. This accomplishes 2 things, one it gives the deer time to lay down and expire, second, and more important to me anyway, it is much safer climbing down from a stand when you are calm than all jacked up right after a good shot. With archery equipment, I never go for the heart, always go for double lung. The spray you get is much easier to follow and usually you get the trail much more quickly than waiting for the cavity to fill to your exit hole. And of the many archery deer I have taken over the years, it seems to me that the deer tend to lay down much quicker with a double lung shot with a good broadhead. One of the longest well hit deer I have ever had to track was one that was quartered away a good bit and I took out the on side lung and the top of the heart. That deer ran over 400 yards before it even thought about laying down. Luckily I watched the first 200 yards as it was a big open field it ran across. Not a single drop of blood past the exit of the arrow till around 150 yards. Then it was a pretty good trail. You just never know how a deer will react to being run through with an arrow. I've seen well hit deer go lay down within my eyesight. I've seen poorly hit deer do the same thing. And I've seen the opposite from both. Generally though, if it is a kill shot, 90% of the time a well hit whitetail won't go very far before laying down, but there is always that 10% that you have to worry about. So waiting a good 30 minutes won't ever hurt you.

Well I spent about 5 hrs today tracking. Pretty confident I missed but I was also pretty confident I was lined up on the shoulder. No blood, no hair, found the tree my muzzle loader round hit but was at a level it could have been a possible passthrough but with the rounds I was using not likely. Only reason we searched long and hard was after I shot we heard the deer crash into a downed tree below. After waiting half an hour we got up and the deer jumped up out of the bottom and ran. Have never seen a deer get shot at and bed close by. You never know how the day is going to go.

Years ago I changed to a high shoulder shot in the evening and
have never since had to track a deer after dark!

Yeah you loose about 1/2 of the off shoulder,
but have never bloodied the back straps.

I agree on tracking and finding the deer if you believe your shot is good. Somehow the "backing out and waiting till morning" thing seems to have become the thing to do on tv...why, not sure when they can see the hit. In my experience, if you put the arrow through the boiler room they rarely go much beyond 60-80 yards and are often dead within 60 yards. My rule of thumb is to track it, and if I get to that 80 yard distance and the sign isn't strong then I might decide to back out. If the sign is strong, I'll keep following. I don't know about you guys but I feel like by looking at the blood trail and asking yourself how long something can survive with that kind of blood loss gives me plenty of clues. Scattered drops...not so good, a steady stream w big splashes, frothy...that animal is close and probably dead already. They only have so much blood in them and if the blood trail is consistent, it's dead. Go get it home.

TV archers never get a pass-through. Seems like they get 3 inches of penetration.

I've noticed that too. Not that I watch too many hunting shows, but I can recall noticing how many bow-shot deer I've seen on the shows I have watched run off with the arrow buried not even halfway to the fletching.

You would think they have the best equipment, too. I always get a pass through, even back in the late 1980s with old compound and aluminum arrows.

The theory somebody told me is these guys use really light arrows to maximize speed/trajectory. When they couple that with aggressive mechanicals, there is weak penetration. But it seems really poor to me.

I also seen a lot of them TV shows where they shot deer nice and light out and then its Pitch dark out when they get to it? and they say crap like it only went 50 yrds and seen it go down and such??
then why it take hours to go get it
OR they say they recovered it FAST and its stiff as a board when they show it??
I won't say all shows are full of BS
But I know for a fact , MANY things go on OFF camera or just never make it to be seen
I was p[art of a 4 yr hunting video series, so trust me, LOTS of crap goes on without you ever knowing, and that goes from LOST deer, poor hits, and so on!
even see things shot with "X" brand and CLAIMED to be using another??

TV hunting shows are NOT how 90% of real hunters hunt IMO
its more entertainment with a LITTLE Hunting mixed in!

The coyotes here often hear a gunshot as a dinner bell. Several times deer have gone down within sight of my stand and coyotes have beat me to the deer. After field dressing deer i often set up on the gut pile and shoot coyotes.

The only time I do not get a total pass thru is if I accidentally hit the spine. I've gone through shoulder bones, ribs and generally I find my arrow buried 6 inches in the dirt or worse, stuck in a root or something and I lose the broadhead and/or arrow. I've been shooting NAP Thunderheads forever...20 or more years I bet. And even though I've converted to carbon arrows and dropped my broadhead weight from 125 to 100 I still pass thru. So when I watch the tv shows n arrows are sticking half out of deer I'm not inclined to change what I'm doing. I like 2 holes, one high, one low. I'm also wondering if it's the cameras and the perspective they bring or if some of these guys are shooting at what I think are crazy distances. I don't know, but when I see arrows sticking out of deer I figure I'll stick to my realistic distances, and my old school heads.