Four days after the shot, in deep snow, Thor finds the deer

By Bob Yax
Deer Search of Finger Lakes
owner of Thor von Moosbach-Zuzelek, born April 6, 2012

With gun season being such a tracking bust due to all the snow, (we only took 3 calls) it was nice to get back on an Archery call this past weekend.  At least the hunter knew where he hit the deer!

We ended up with a  fun track (body search) and recovery yesterday in the deep snow.  Thor did a great job trudging through the snow that was over his head in some places    The hunter, Jon, had intestine hit a buck,  with a bow, last Wednesday evening.  He tracked it 100 yards that night, then backed out.  The next day he did a big area search for it, with no luck.   It snowed quite a bit since then and it had not been above 20F degrees, so there was hope that the deer might still be good.  We couldn’t arrange a good time to track until Sunday afternoon.

Yesterday we just basically did a casual walk through some areas that Jon had already searched and some areas he didn’t.  Thor would periodically start following pretty fresh deer tracks in the snow.  I’d pull him off after a short while so that he would focus more on the general air scenting that I wanted him to do.  About an hour into our search Thor picked up his nose and headed downhill towards a creek in fresh undisturbed snow – I thought “this is good”.   After about 40 yards, still air scenting,  he crossed the small creek and headed into thick brush.  Not long after, he stopped and buried his nose in the snow.  At that point I saw a spot of blood next to his head (it was the 1st blood we’d seen).  When I looked closer I saw a small tuft of deer hair.  At that point, I thought that Thor had just found some old part of a deer, (it was actually the butt end of the deer that a fox had started chewing on)  the hunter then yelled “there he is” and pointed to the half rack sticking out of the snow.  Holy crap! We found him!  He ended up about 400 yards from the hit site – maybe in his 2nd bed?

The hunter proceeded to gut the nice 9pt.  It wasn’t frozen solid but was very cold.  It had no unusual odor, so there’s a chance the meat may still be good – I’ll find out from the Hunter.

It was a good end to the season; I wish it wasn’t over!  Eleven recoveries just like last year. 

Thor with "his" very cold buck.