Bearded Lady Tracking and Game Recovery

Just because there’s no deer doesn’t mean the track wasn’t magical.

We bumped this deer last night after approximately a mile, and backed out to try again in the morning. We bumped her again this morning after 1.84 miles.

That’s one tired happy dog right there…

We are living the high life at Honey Creek Resort with True Impact Outdoors veterans hunt

Another win for Karma yesterday, and another good story!

This buck cruised through while the hunter was sitting, creating an awkward shot angle and the hunter admitted he hit “a little back” from the vital triangle he was aiming for. Now for trackers, those three words usually mean guts, but that was not the case here!

Because the hunter knew the shot was not where he wanted it, they waited a very appropriate 4 hours to track. The deer was bumped 350 yards from where he was shot, likely 5-6 hours after the shot because of the time it took to track in the dark.

The hunter thought the deer looked like it was stumbling, so waited a short time and tracked again. He was bumped again after 75 yards and the hunter backed out.

Karma arrived 22 hours after the shot, and was able to locate the deer another 75 yards after the point of loss, with zero blood present the last 75 yards.

The shot went through both lungs, and I inspected the pluck myself to confirm. Deer are just that tough this time of year!!!

If this buck had been bumped 1 or 2 hours sooner, who knows how far he might have traveled.

It’s been a long weekend of tracking and I finally have time to share this recovery.

The deer crossed the river onto a hairpin with about 250 yards between the river and a farm conglomerate we couldn’t contact for permission.

Karma took a beeline up the riverbank and straight down a track headed right for the property line. About 75 yards in she started putting her nose in the air, and then put her nose back down and drug us straight to the property line where we stopped.

With zero blood to confirm, the hunter asked if we could keep looking. He had waited 6 years to hunt in Iowa, and this was his target buck. We were praying he might have turned and crossed back onto the hunters property.

We tried several other trails, and even bumped a bedded doe with minimal interest. We started to run the original line again, and instead of continuing past the spot where she’d put her nose in the air, she followed her nose straight to this buck based on wind scent alone. Based on the direction he was facing and the trail he was on, he had gone over to the other property and circled back.

Thank goodness for a stiff afternoon breeze and a dog with a good nose!!

Waiting for permission to cross the property line where the hunter “doesn’t think he went”

At least my buddy is cute…

A good read for anyone interested in Canine Nutrition: Feeding the Working and Sporting Dog

https://s3.amazonaws.com/mmi_sacn5/2019/SACN5_18.pdf?fbclid=IwZXh0bgNhZW0CMTEAAR0aSLyPytvySAuw4VQj4k9KwtyswU2_axlxecdYKr2lj76KLNlWHKozHlc_aem_iPvixXqNzdCG6ztdBM5OLQ

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A tale of a .350 legend and trusting your dog…

Deer Trackers are like fishermen, they have a bunch of stories and a bunch of photos. These photos have a helluva story to with them, and I wish I could say it was perfect work. This track was a learning experience and I hope my fellow trackers can learn something too. I hope you can hang with me and make it to the end…

The background is this is a youth deer, and they knew the buck was larger than the one in front, but they didn’t know how big so there’s no buck fever at play. The firearm was a .350 legend, and it was 75 yards from the blind to the deer. At the shot, the deer dropped in his tracks, and laid down long enough for a father/daughter cheer and hug before he got back up and ran through some thick CRP. The general direction was known, but that was all. They followed sparse large drops of blood for 40 yards then backed out and called immediately for a dog. A high back shot was assumed based on the deers behavior.

I arrived 15 hours after the shot. The deer ran through CRP then blood disappeared. The dog made a hard 90 on the 4-wheeler trail around the edge of the cornfield and was focused and pulling hard. After 75 yards there was zero blood and at this point the hunters had driven over where the dog was tracking on their way home, and much like any hunter will pick up scent on their feet, the 4-wheeler picked up scent and moved it down the track.

At a turn in the 4-wheeler trail Karma took a few seconds to check her track, and I marked the spot as a location to return to knowing that the track had been driven over. Sure enough, Karma slowly lost confidence as the scent dispersed and I knew we had missed a turn somewhere. She was also getting really hot at this point. So I put her in my pack and we walked back to the corner.

I let her work about 10 yds behind the corner, and asked her to double check herself. She went to work like the little worker bee she is, and this time chose to move into the standing corn. Where we found blood!! Finally. After 150+ yds of nothing, we had confirmed we were on the right path.

The blood was high on the corn with a few sporadic drips, confirming our suspicion of a high back shot. The blood started to thin out, and I started to worry we were going to run out of accumulated blood running off the hair at about the same time Karma made a hard 90 away from our track with visible blood, and I figured she was crittering. I pulled her back to the blood 3 times before picking her up to follow blood by sight.

The blood continued 40 yds down the rows before he turned across the rows, knocking cornstalks down in his path. Another 20 yds later we stopped seeing cornstalks down, and we also lost visible blood. I set Karma down, but she tracked across stalks that weren’t down, so I wasn’t sure if I’d set her down in the correct direction. The hunter decided to call the track. We both thought Karma had told us this deer wasn’t dead.

I packed up, instructing the hunter to put cameras out to be looking for proof of life. I stated several times deer ALWAYS go home if they can, and the deer had been in the process of circling when we lost the track. I left feeling pretty good about reading my dog well, knowing where to reset her, and being able to progress the track significantly from where the hunter lost blood.

30 minutes later I got a phone call. The hunter had taken my thoughts and decided to check every crossing and trail headed back towards home. And in the process, found him on a trail with his head pointing towards his core area. He never bedded, never stopped that we could find sign of. He appears to have collapsed while walking, something I have only seen a couple other times with these big tough deer.

I drove back to give my dog the win she desperately needed after I screwed her up by not believing her. I can only guess Karma was trying to pull me down a back-track, and I didn’t recognize it because I was so focused on the blood. Something every experienced tracker will tell you is dogs don’t care about blood. They don’t need it, and it tells them very little compared to all the other information left by the deers trail. You gotta trust your dog…

We could not locate an entry or exit wound. There was ZERO blood on the body of this deer. The only blood was on the nose and face where it dripped from the nose.

The shot was actually a single lung shot. This brute is so big, the 180 grain .350 didn’t have enough power to punch through both lungs.

Congratulations to this young lady on an absolutely fantastic deer, a fantastic shot, and a successful season!

Ari’s tracking legacy lives on. Here’s her grandson Jager featured in Gamekeeper’s magazine.