Not all wounded deer can be recovered

By Andy Bensing

As all trackers know, not all deer that you track are gettable.  Notice how after we jumped the buck, which was heading right back towards the original hit site.  I see this quite frequently, and it helps me to confirm the jumped buck is the right one when you don't see him or there is no sign.    It would be too much of a coincidence for some other deer to take that path as frequently as I see it.  I have had confirmed sightings of this behavior of wounded deer in the past.  We did not see the buck go out but I was pretty sure this was the correct deer when the trail went hot since there was pulled hair in the bloodless bed he came out of.  Pulled hair and a path back to the hit sight confirmed it for me.    Also notice the buck made a classic "J" hook before he bedded.  Distance from hit to bed where we jumped him was 1200 meters and there was no visible blood after the point of loss.  This buck had been shot twice and knocked down twice from both shots with a shotgun slug.  He actually fell down and did not move for 5 minutes after the 2nd shot before he got up and stumbled away.  I found bone fragments that appeared to come from a large joint either leg or hip.  Since he was running well ahead of us 26 hours after the shot and he only bled for 150 yards after the shot in the first place I deemed him ungettable with a dog on a leash, and we quit the trail

Notice how the "active log" has made a nice clean line on Google Earth.  When you save a track on a Garmin and then transfer it to Google earth it displays all those annoying bread crumbs dots on Google Earth.  The "active log" does not display the bread crumbs.   I filled in the approximate path the buck took after I lost my GPS with the thin yellow line.  We did not get the buck but I was real happy when I found my dropped GPS as I re-traced my trail in the swamp.

I try to put my hunters to work as best I can. The hunter is carrying my backpack
and 2 sets of waders just in case we need them to go into the marsh.