Moose Droppings

The Art of Blood Trailing

Dec 03, 2006 @ 11:15 am by Moose

Dan Kibler has a good article in today’s Fayettvile Observer on “Tracking Wounded Deer”. A good article on a task that can be difficult at times;

the reality is, the deer of your dreams doesn’t always collapse at your shot, not the way they do on those TV shows. More often than you care to admit, a well-shot deer will still leave in a hasty fashion, getting out of sight in a handful of leaps and bounds that doubles your heart rate and leaves your chest heaving.
That’s where the real work begins — finding him. It’s a task that can be a light walk in the woods or a real labor, depending not only on how accurate your shot was, but on how you approach the job of focusing on droplets or blood spatters on leaves and broom straw and knee-high brush.

He talks to two NC Outfitters on their experience tracking wounded deer and what they tell their clients to do immediately after the shot. The actions the hunter takes right after the shot can ultimately determine how easy of a job recovery might be as well as if the deer will be recovered. I recall a few years back when I was hunting with a group of hunters and one of them shot his second deer in his life the first being in the early 70’s almost 30 years ago. He made some major mistakes and we ultimately never recovered that animal from what I’m certain was a fatal hit. In this case the hunter got out of the tree and chased the deer through the woods not giving it any time to bed down. By the time some of us with more tracking ability had gotten there this hunter and a few of the other novices had scuffed up the leaves and the forest floor so bad we couldn’t find the blood trail.

My last blood tracking job for one of my deer was in 2004 and here is the story with photos that gives you an idea about how I was taught and how I trail wounded game on those rare occasions that I find myself in that situation.

In Dan’s article one of the outfitters he interviews is one that I know well and have featured some blog posts about and that’s Mike Noles from Conmans Guide Service. ( Big Buck Story in September and Big Bears from Last Month ) Dan has some great tips in his article and I hope you learn something that may help ya in a future hunt.