Well, after a long day, you can't recover what aint dead! WE arrived at the hit site around 9:30 and found that the deer was shot at 80 yards, w/ .308, did not fall but ran off in the same direction it was heading when it came out. Almost immediately, they found blood and trailed it for about 290 yards according to my GPS.
I put JD down and he immediately took trailing hard running through the blood and flagged trail pullin gme along. Their flagging stopped at 295 yards where they last jumped the deer last night. I found the wound bed, which had red blood, but no signs of bone, stomach bile/contents, or lung tissue. To me it looked like a low hit that was bleeding and not mortal. That was reassured when they tell me he bolted out of the cover and seemed to leave the area like he was unhurt hopping tree tops like a olympic track star.
We tracked him pretty good out to 400 yards, w/ the blood thinning out less and less with each step. Over the last 200 yards, we would find minimal blood rubbed low to the ground on palmettos, but nothing on the ground. I found one spot where he had dropped some blood on a log that he crossed. Finally at 565 yards from the hit site, we came out on another logging road and could not locate his direction of travel from there, even with the dog. I think this one will be walking around and get shot in a couple of days chasing does!
|