Cabelas jacket kept Mike warm but it was a tracking dog who found his deer

The picture is taken from the Cabelas online catalog. It was sent to me by Larry Gohlke whose tracking dog Nix was instrumental in recovery of this buck. I asked Larry to write more about how it had happened.

"Mike Sr hunts a piece of land where he sees lots of deer during bow season including the week before our Wisconsin deer rifle season. He then puts his son Mike Jr in what should be the very best spot for the nine day rifle season. The result has been that almost no deer show up for the kid. Last year his luck changed a lot. Unfortunately, when this large buck showed up just before closing time another 10 deer did too. Mike thought he made a good shot on the buck but when it took off there were tails going every direction.

I was called in to find the buck which was one of eleven deer in the area before the shot. There is no telling how many other deer showed up after dark and before we started tracking. There was no blood and Mike only knew that none of the deer had run toward him. I have had to look for a number of deer with similar starts. My two year old dog Nix and I work together pretty well in these situations.

We started at one side checking the possible escape routes and followed many trails without finding any blood. At one point we actually chased some deer across a wooden foot bridge. What a racket! After many trails that didn't have any blood on them we took a trail which one of the hunters had just inspected. We found one drop of blood that the hunter had missed. After a distance we came to a blown down tree and the next blood. The deer had stopped before the tree leaving a blood trail and then walked to the other side of the tree and died in the tree branches and tall marsh grass.

I am convinced that a lot of deer could be found with dogs, the deer that the hunter would never be able to confirm were hit. Mike is a believer!


Larry Gohlke"

Larry Gohlke with Nix