Thought you guys might like to hear another blood trail story from a hunt last year to show how hardy some of these deer are. The backdrop is that this was the last day my buddy and I would hunt last season and it had snowed the day before with most snow coming after noon or so. Anyway, we sat in the cold and snow all morning and neither of us saw anything. We were maybe 3/4 mile apart as the crow flies but 3 miles by road. As this was our last day, he was going to collect his trail cam from the area he was hunting and we would meet up at his truck after I walked out and drove over. As he got to his cam, he noticed a significant blood trail walking right in front of the camera, plain as day in the snow. He was the only one hunting there and there had been no shots fired that morning at all so, the deer had to have been hit the evening before. He followed it for a little while and then I eventually joined him after I made my way to where he was. We then followed the track until the blood became sparse and we basically ran out of snow. The area we lost it in was just past a slough he had crossed (where we saw a large hoof print with splayed toes we assumed was a buck) and was in an area where the snow had melted and washed all sign away. The first pic shows the path of our track in turquoise and the straight line distance is in red. The straight line is .85 miles so I am not sure how long the actual track was but it was over a mile fore sure. The odd thing is that the deer was bleeding out of both sides as was clearly evident in the snow, with some blood/small clots being brighter red and some being yellowish brown. I have to believe he was hit with a quartering shot that clipped one lung and then hit stomach. The second pic is the last little spec of blood I found before we lost the trail. While neither of us shot the deer, we felt we had the obligation to try and find him and gave as good an effort as we could given the situation and unknowns about the shot. I want to say all in we tracked the deer for 2 hours or so. I hate we did not find him, but I am sure he is dead due to the blood loss we saw and the fact that at least one lung was hit. Maybe we'll find a dead head this year in that area???
