Shot analysis by Bob Yax on the two deer recovered by his tracking dog Thor

These two bucks were recovered last weekend by Bob Yax and his tracking dachshund Thor. 

The Pittsford buck was hit low in the chest with a bow on Sunday morning. See entrance photo attached.   Also, check out the kid wearing shorts while he was tracking with us! Ouch!   We  jumped this liver hit buck twice, 6.5-7 hrs after the hit.  In its 3^rd bed, the kid was able to put another arrow into it.  We found a 1 inch deep slice thru the edge of the liver when he gutted it. That was a long survival for a liver hit!

 *****

We jumped the Honeoye buck 17 hrs after the 7 mm hit,  from its 1^st bed, about 700 yds from the hit site.   Up till then we had only found a few spots of blood to confirm Thor was on the bucks trail.  At times, I was really wondering since Thor took us close to 2 houses and across at least 200 yds of cut lawn and a main road with no blood.  After jumping up from a very bloody bed, the buck ended up  (luckily!) in a deep ravine 100 yds further up the trail.  The hunter was able to shoot  it a 2^nd time from about 40 yds as it tried climbing  up the far side of the steep ravine.   The 7 mm hit was really low in the front of the chest and hit the top of both front legs – see entrance and exit photos attached.  The buck was quartering to him a little.   Not really sure what vitals he hit (maybe low lungs?) but I know he missed the heart entirely, since after close examination, it’s now in my fridge.  I’m going to check out the rib cage after the guy finishes butchering it to see if the bullet did make it inside the chest cavity. 

      

Shot analysis and deer recovery summary by Bob Yax

Bob Yax from Deer Search of Finger Lakes and his wirehaired dachshund Thor recovered this bow-shot 10 pointer on November 30 in Pittsford, NY. As Bob said it must be a tough neighborhood as the buck had two broken G-2s.  

Bob also wrote: 

Out of the 49 we've recovered in the last 5 years it was the 5^th deer that was hit in the chest (without liver or stomach involved). It was the 4^th that had a slice across the outside of the heart! The only other chest shot we've recovered, was a double lunger (hit in the rain) that went only about 150 yards.

We've never recovered a chest/lung shot deer (other than heart) that’s gone beyond 150 yards.   If they can breathe long enough to go beyond that,  they can breathe for a long time (days) & distance.  Many times we’ve kicked up these marginal chest shots the next day, and they were still going strong.

Marginal lung shots are the worst!!!

Note, all these heart shot deer acted as if liver hit.  They all bedded quickly,  within 100 yards, but then got up out of that 1^st bed.   Three of them at least 2 hrs after being hit.  All were found within 300 yards of the hit site.   None of these were pushed very hard – the hunters backed out after pushing them out of their 1^st bed – that’s the secret !

Hit Site Evaluation Seminars for Deer Hunters

By John Jeanneney and Andy Bensing

The Hit Site Evaluation Seminar is a new idea for the United States.  The goal of the Seminar is to educate hunters to better interpret sign at the point of impact and along the ensuing wounded deer trail. It’s important as an effective means of showing hunters how to interpret and deal with deer that have been shot outside of the quick kill target zone. Traditional hunter training programs don’t dwell on this subject, but in the real world deer do move just as the shot is taken. And bullets and arrows have been known to deviate from their intended course.

The center piece of the hit site seminar is a hanging road-killed deer. The idea originally came  to North America from France, and John Jeanneney first witnessed it in Quebec, Canada, where two of his French friends led a seminar on finding wounded deer. In June of 2013 Andy Bensing and John tried out an expanded version of this hit site evaluation at the annual United Blood Trackers Trackfest  at Arena, Wisconsin and then two weeks later at a North American Teckel Club event in Pennsylvania to which non-member deer hunters were invited. In both states the reception was enthusiastic. The seminar was certainly a departure from the usual presentation on the subject, and the practical applications of the new information were easy to understand.. Those who attended actively participated in the evaluations, and of course this is the best way to learn.

In both seminars a road-killed deer in good condition was used. Acquiring a road-killed deer is not difficult, but local game laws regulations should be consulted, and it must be kept in a suitable cooler or freezer before the event. The deer was  hooked up, in a standing position, suspended by a rope stretched between two trees. A plastic sheet was hung up about five yards behind the deer and extended forward  under the suspended deer. Its purpose was to catch hair, flesh and bone fragments  blown out of the deer by strategically placed  shots. Shots were taken with  bow and arrow, shotgun slugs and high caliber rifle bullets.

The hanging deer carcass was the centerpiece of the seminar.

After each shot the instructor and hunters together inspected the hit site and the hanging plastic sheet behind it to evaluate the results. The first thing that most of us have learned from the hit site evaluation is that we hunters miss a great deal if we inspect only the ground right where the deer was standing.

After the shots we found “sign” on the plastic sheet well behind the deer that  probably would have been missed by most hunters in a real deer hunting situation. It seems likely that many American hunters are not inspecting a broad enough area behind the hit sites as they look for the sign that will tell them where they have hit the deer and how they should deal with the situation.

One of the many things  hunters learn at the hit site is that flat sections of bone usually come from the legs; they are not “pieces of rib” as is often reported. They learn the difference in the amount of hair that comes from a grazing hit as compared to a solid, more straight-on shot. The physical results of high back shots can be shown and the identification of types of hair can reveal where the animal was hit.

Additionally bowhunters learn how the sloping surfaces of the rib cage can deflect broadheads so  that there is no effective penetration into the chest cavity and vital organs. They also  realize that the real kill zone is considerably smaller than what is presented  on 3-D Tournament targets.

The bowhunter demonstrates the risks of a head-on shot

The shot analysis outdoors on the hanging deer was even more effective because it was preceded by an indoor PowerPoint  presentation priming the attendees’ consciousness for what they were about to see outside.  Photos were shown revealing such “unexpected” information as the location of part of the stomach and liver within the rib cage. Other anatomical photos, showed the  kidneys lying quite far forward, just back of the ribs.  The indoor segment also discussed recovery strategies for deer wounded in different ways and under different environmental circumstances such as bad weather and predator competition.

The PowerPoint introduction to the seminar

The hit site program is effective because it is simple, graphic and deals with a real deer. It was so realistic in Pennsylvania that a young turkey vulture landed to check things out during  the introductory PowerPoint session.

Andy demonstrates shot placement

 The hit site evaluation seminar concluded with a “Walk in the Woods”.   Nine stations were set up to simulate wounded deer sign both at a hit site and along the trail. Seminar participants were asked to identify and interpret wounded deer sign such as splayed hoof prints, blood smears, bone fragments, and arrows covered with different types of body fluids and tissue.

The Hit Site Evaluation Seminars have great potential as an interesting half day event. No doubt the seminars would improve hunter effectiveness in recovering the deer that they shoot. For more information about the seminar contact Andy Bensing, abensing@pbkennels.com.

 

 Hunters who attended the seminar sponsored by the NATC.

Many thanks to the NATC, Kirk Vaughan and Joe Kopcok for the pictures!

Classic Deer Behavior from a Classic Poor Shot Selection

by Andy Bensing
November 13, 2011

Here is the story of a track I had that encompassed many valuable lessons about blood tracking with a dog and hunting whitetail deer in general.  When the call came in the hunter reported having arrowed a mature buck from 20 feet up and at the close distance of only 5 to 8 yards.  When I got to the hit sit the distance was actually even worse.  It was only 4 yards at best.  To make matters even worse than that, the buck was facing directly towards the hunter when he shot.  In that configuration, there is absolutely no chance of double lunging the animal and only an extremely very low chance of hitting the heart.  This is a shot that never should be taken with a bow.  The hunter did not see the arrow hit the deer but he reported a bright red blood soaked arrow with short gray or white hairs on it. 

At the shot, the deer barely reacted and walked away 10 yards and stood wobbling for 20 seconds then walked another 15 yards away and lay down behind a tree in some brush.  The deer laid there, with no window for a second shot, for 45 minutes with its mouth wide open panting.  After 45 minutes the hunter reported the deer staggered to his feet and wobbled away out of sight without offering another shot opportunity.  The deer left a solid 2 inch wide strip of bright red blood from a few yards past the hit site to the place it laid for 45 minutes.  After it got up from the 45 minute bed there was not a single drop of blood found by the hunter or my dog the next day over the course of the whole track as seen below.

After hearing the hunter's account of the deer's behavior after the shot, I assumed he had hit back farther than he had aimed and gut-shot the deer.  When I got to the hit sight I quickly discovered that the deer had been single lunged, not gut shot.  There were 2 oak leaves in the 45 minute bed filled with coagulated blood still showing the typical hundreds of bird shot sized bubbles often seen in blood gurgling out of a deer from a lung shot.  From that point forward there was not a drop of blood found.

In retrospect, what likely happened was the razor sharp arrow cleanly slipped between the ribs and pierced one lung without touching any bone and the deer barely knew anything happened other than a sudden shortness of breath and sick feeling.  He walked over, laid down to rest, the lung collapsed and therefore stopped bleeding as Mother Nature had planned.  Mature bucks are masters of conserving energy.  They rarely panic.  That's how they get to be mature bucks.  Once the bleeding stops and the deer has been lucky enough to not go into shock (as a result of not panicking and running off all crazed and losing too much blood too fast) now all you have is a tired anemic deer with one lung.  No different than a person who just came out of surgery after having one of his two lungs removed.

When I started my dog Eibe on the 24 hour old track she had a bit of difficulty getting going.  I am guessing that with all the massive blood the first 30 yards the area was flooded with scent and she had a hard time figuring out what the deer himself smelled like.  We knew what direction the deer had walked out of the bed but I let Eibe take 4 or 5 trial runs in several directions for 30 or 40 meters each until she finally locked into the deer's individual scent.  There was no blood to be seen and she started poking her nose down into the fluffy oak leaves and checking hoof prints in the soft underlying ground.  Once locked into the correct buck we tracked bloodlessly for 1000 meters through open forest and field and up a steep hill to a briar and laurel thicket.  The trail went about 100 meters into the thicket on the top of the hill and then began to hook back. 

At that point I said to the hunter that I believed we were about to find a dead deer or jump him still alive. This deer had shown typical wounded deer behavior.  He had rested till he got his wits about himself and then headed efficiently back to a safe bedding area to hold up.  Deer will often make a button hook, as indicated on the map above, before bedding down.  This allows them to watch their back trail and see predators coming and slip away before the predator is right up on them.  And that is exactly what this buck did.  After hooking back 100 meters and laying on the edge of a bench 70 meters off to the side of his back trail, this buck saw/heard us coming and slipped away before we saw him.  Eibe got stuck for about 5 minutes at his bed in the button hook I assume because of the abundance of scent there from being there all night.  Once she got that worked out she shot off like a rocket and I suspected then we were on the buck's hot trail but could not be sure as there was no sign except for the classic pattern the track had been taking. 

After 500 meters on the hot trail with no confirming sign I was starting to worry that maybe we were not on the correct deer's trail.  Most of the hot trail showed no hoof prints or sign at all except I had seen some small fresh tracks that went with some very small, warm to the touch droppings.  Not a good sign as these could not possibly have been from our buck.  The small prints eventually disappeared and the trail then began to curve around to begin to make a circle and large prints from a running deer appeared on the line.  I believe the buck initially just walked away from his button hook bed but we eventually got closer and he began to run and therefore started making easily visible tracks. 

I still wasn't absolutely sure Eibe was on the correct deer but when I saw the path of the deer on my GPS circling back to his original trail from the day before my confidence level began to rise.  What are the odds that some other random other deer would take this course?  Not very high in my estimation.  I told the hunter that if the deer we were following continued to loop back towards the button hook bed then we could be pretty darn sure it was the buck we were after.  Deer, just like rabbits and other prey animals make circles back over their previous course of escape to confuse their pursuers. 

Well this buck did not use that strategy but used another strategy that I have seen before.  When he got to the place I expected him to circle back to the button hook, he instead ran right through an overgrown field filled with deer paths everywhere but took the exact course through the field that he had gone the day before but in the opposite direction for 250 meters.  Clearly no coincidence.  If I had had any doubts, they were gone.  This was the correct buck that had been shot the day before through one lung.  The other thing I was pretty sure of was that he was too strong to catch up to with a tracking dog on a leash.  I forgot to mention the other strong, evasive maneuver he used that worked pretty well for him. 

I am sitting here typing this out with my arm in a sling because at one point when he started the 250 meter retrace in the field, it appeared he purposely avoided an easy crossing of a 7 foot deep by 4 foot wide ravine and jumped across the ravine at an awkward spot.  Well, his pursuer, me, fell into that ravine when a log he used as a bridge broke!  But I am pretty tough too so I handed the leash to the hunter for awhile and hobbled along till I got my wind and could take the reins again.  The buck continued back right past the original hit sight and eventually got on the back trail of the trail he had followed before he was shot.  At this point I considered all the following information I knew about the deer:

1.    One lung hit that collapsed and stopped bleeding.
2.    Hole out bottom of chest but not really that much blood likely lost.
3.    Was willing to go up a very steep hill within one or two hours of being shot the day before.
4.    Never let us get close enough to see or hear him even in some very open hardwoods after chasing him
1½ miles after the button hook bed.
5.    Appeared to be able to run through the forest at will without struggling 24 hours after the shot.
6.    Made a very large 500m circle and had enough wits about him to throw in a 250 meter back track.
7.    Tried to kill his pursuers (and almost did) by setting up a booby trap at the ravine :-)

I decided to give up the trail.  As long as this deer can fight off any ensuing infection, this deer has a good chance to recover from his wounds.  I hope my shoulder heels as quickly!