Speaker 1: Welcome to the Wired to Hunt Foundations podcast, your guide
Speaker 1: to the fundamentals of better deer hunting, and now your
Speaker 1: host Tony Peterson. Hey, everyone, welcome to the wire to
Speaker 1: Hunt Foundations podcast, which is brought to you by First Light.
Speaker 1: I'm your host, Tony Peterson, and today's episode is all
Speaker 1: about blood trailing, or more specifically, what you should do
Speaker 1: when you're actively on the trail. If you didn't listen
Speaker 1: to the last week's episode, I urge you to do
Speaker 1: that before you listen to this one. That episode is
Speaker 1: all about understanding how to kind of interpret your initial
Speaker 1: instincts after you've taken a shot, and how to get
Speaker 1: started on developing a good blood trailing plan. This week
Speaker 1: is you know, it's a continuation of that, which is
Speaker 1: really going to involve everything you might want to think
Speaker 1: about when you've waited long enough off and it's time
Speaker 1: to actually take up the trail. I honestly think this
Speaker 1: is one of the more valuable Foundations podcast I've ever written,
Speaker 1: so I hope I'm not way off base on that one,
Speaker 1: So listen up, learn, and hopefully you'll find more. Dear,
Speaker 1: my friends, about five years ago, I was standing at
Speaker 1: the bus stop with my little girls. The neighbor girl
Speaker 1: and her dad were there as well. It was the
Speaker 1: time of spring when the songbirds really start to make
Speaker 1: their way north, and I heard a familiar bird call.
Speaker 1: I told the girls to listen up because there was
Speaker 1: a cardinal nearby. My neighbor said nope. So I said,
Speaker 1: what the hell are you talking about, Keith, And he said,
Speaker 1: that's not a cardinal. I told him that, I swear
Speaker 1: I've looked at cardinals, you know, dead in their eyes
Speaker 1: while they made that exact sound, and he said, nope,
Speaker 1: that's a chickadee. I can't tell you how right I
Speaker 1: knew I was. So I went to YouTube, and amongst
Speaker 1: the German death metal videos and the basic how to
Speaker 1: fix it around your house kind of stuff that popped up,
Speaker 1: I started watching live birds actually calling, the way that
Speaker 1: live birds actually call. And do you know what, Keith
Speaker 1: was right. Somehow, my whole life, I had falsely attributed
Speaker 1: a bird call to the cardinal when it belonged to
Speaker 1: a totally different species. The worst part was that I
Speaker 1: would have been a stupid amount of money that I
Speaker 1: was right and he was wrong, and if I had
Speaker 1: I'd have lost a stupid amount of money on a
Speaker 1: stupid bet made by well, a stupid guy who doesn't
Speaker 1: know shit about songbird calls. It's the things in life
Speaker 1: we think we know that we don't that are the
Speaker 1: most dangerous. Ask anyone who works at a bow shop
Speaker 1: or worse, I don't like the gun counter at Cabella's.
Speaker 1: What it's like to deal with confidently wrong people all
Speaker 1: the time, and you'll hear a pile of horror stories. Now,
Speaker 1: I'm sure we all have these issues in one way
Speaker 1: or another, but you know where they are most damaging.
Speaker 1: While we're blood trailing, when you decide that wounded bucks
Speaker 1: always go downhill, or that the blood on the leaves
Speaker 1: definitely has to be lung blood, even though you're three
Speaker 1: quarters of a mile into the trail and it's anything
Speaker 1: but pink and frothy, then you're in trouble. This, if
Speaker 1: nothing else, is a warning. Last episode, I told you
Speaker 1: to trust your initial instincts on the shot, and I
Speaker 1: meant that, but I also said trust the actual evidence more.
Speaker 1: In that case, it was the evidence on the arrow.
Speaker 1: In this case, it's the blood tracks and whatever else
Speaker 1: you can use to inform your trailing efforts. Trust the evidence.
Speaker 1: Trust the evidence, Trust the evidence. I mean it. This
Speaker 1: is the best way to curtail too much optimism and
Speaker 1: to set a pace for the trail that might allow
Speaker 1: you to pick up on as many clues as post
Speaker 1: a bole. Now, I guess before you can trust the
Speaker 1: evidence too much, you have to understand what that means.
Speaker 1: We've all heard, or we all know that pink and
Speaker 1: frothy blood means lungs, but it could mean one lung,
Speaker 1: or it could mean to and the difference is often
Speaker 1: a seventy five yard easy blood trail versus a much longer,
Speaker 1: much rougher, much less guaranteed to end in man hugs
Speaker 1: blood trail. The evidence in this case could be lung
Speaker 1: blood on one side of the trail, or on both.
Speaker 1: It could be long blood for two yards and then
Speaker 1: just less blood or only sparse red non long blood.
Speaker 1: That means that you didn't get both lungs, and the
Speaker 1: short easy one is not in your future. But what
Speaker 1: about I don't know, dark red blood. That might be liver,
Speaker 1: but the liver is big, and no two liver hits
Speaker 1: seem to go the same way. If you look at
Speaker 1: the liver when you shoot a deer and I think
Speaker 1: you should. You'll see that it's a funky shaped organ
Speaker 1: with all kinds of lobes on it. How you hit
Speaker 1: it and where you hit it can mean the difference
Speaker 1: between a three hour weight and a two yards successful
Speaker 1: track job, or an eight hour weight that turns into
Speaker 1: a nail biter after you jump him from his bed twice. Now,
Speaker 1: dark red blood is sort of like, I don't know,
Speaker 1: like a gray area. Heart blood is often rich and dark,
Speaker 1: and I bet that there are more than a few
Speaker 1: hunters who can't really tell the difference between the two.
Speaker 1: After all, it's kind of the same blood all over
Speaker 1: in the deer's body. If you hit a vein or
Speaker 1: a muscle that isn't the heart, the blood is gonna
Speaker 1: look an awful lot like it came from the heart.
Speaker 1: But you'll know pretty quickly if that's the case or not.
Speaker 1: The worst scenario here, and this happens a lot, is
Speaker 1: the more muscle you hit, and the heart is a muscle,
Speaker 1: remember that, especially low muscle, the more you'll get heart
Speaker 1: looking blood for a while, But then you won't, and
Speaker 1: you'll find yourself confused and sad and probably a lonely
Speaker 1: given that quick and probably not all too adequate description
Speaker 1: of some of the different types of blood you'll see
Speaker 1: in enough seasons of hunting. I really want to reiterate something.
Speaker 1: If you believe you hit liver and the blood supports it,
Speaker 1: make a retrieval plan around that information. If you get
Speaker 1: into the blood trail on the evidence, stop supporting that,
Speaker 1: it's time to change your plan. For example, if that's
Speaker 1: the case and you give him six hours, but then
Speaker 1: you go out and you jump into fifty yards into
Speaker 1: the trail, you went too early. You know that now,
Speaker 1: So what do you do? Give him more time. Time
Speaker 1: on a blood trail is your friend, even if you're
Speaker 1: fighting the urge to push on through because of the
Speaker 1: weather or some other factor. Now I should say this
Speaker 1: here because I've heard this story a lot. If you
Speaker 1: go hunting and you don't have enough time to blood trailer,
Speaker 1: poorly hit dear for whatever reason, be real careful on
Speaker 1: your shot selection. I don't know how many times I've
Speaker 1: heard someone say that they hunted, you know, a quick
Speaker 1: one right before work, and then they hit one, but
Speaker 1: they didn't get to go out until their kids basketball
Speaker 1: practice was over that night or some other reason by then.
Speaker 1: Who knows, But In that case, time actually might not
Speaker 1: be your friend if it's too much time, and no
Speaker 1: matter what the evidence suggests, once you start on the trail,
Speaker 1: go slow, designate somebody as the leader, and if you're
Speaker 1: with someone else, have them just back you up. They
Speaker 1: can be the trail marker, which is pretty easy to
Speaker 1: do with just some toilet paper or flagging tape. Being
Speaker 1: able to look at your markers tends to make the
Speaker 1: path forward clear because you can see the direction your
Speaker 1: dear is heading. Also, if you need to turn on
Speaker 1: your tracking on your on X, this helps a lot
Speaker 1: to show you the direction the dear is going and
Speaker 1: helps to read the terrain to see where it might
Speaker 1: end up. Now I should say this too, if you
Speaker 1: do use flagging tape during your blood trailing efforts, please
Speaker 1: please go back and pick it up. I don't know
Speaker 1: why this is, but it sucks going into the woods
Speaker 1: seeing evidence of other hunters, even if you know other
Speaker 1: hunters have been in there a lot. Just seeing some
Speaker 1: flagging tape or a discarded water bottle or sent wick
Speaker 1: or whatever takes away from the experience a little bit.
Speaker 1: And I can't really explain why. I know, I just
Speaker 1: don't like it. And I know other hunters probably don't too,
Speaker 1: or don't as well. Now, as you move along the
Speaker 1: trail slowly, try to really understand how much blood your
Speaker 1: dear is likely to lose. We often see a decent
Speaker 1: amount of blood right away, and we overestimate how much
Speaker 1: it really is. Now. Good rule of thumb here is,
Speaker 1: for every pound of live weight the deer has, So
Speaker 1: let's say it's a hundred and sixty pound deer, it's
Speaker 1: gonna have one ounce of blood in it. So a
Speaker 1: hundred and sixty ounces one point two gallons, that's a
Speaker 1: lot of blood in that dear. And seeing blood on
Speaker 1: the ground doesn't necessarily mean that a lot of blood
Speaker 1: came out of that dear. And if you don't believe that,
Speaker 1: hang around with my kids for a little while while
Speaker 1: they spill ship all over my kitchen. And I promise
Speaker 1: you even a little cup of milk looks like a
Speaker 1: lot of milk when it's all over your floor and
Speaker 1: splattered all over the place. All right, that was a
Speaker 1: little side ran. Anyway, when you go on a no
Speaker 1: doubt double lunger heart shot blood trail, you realize how
Speaker 1: much a lot of blood really is. This only gets
Speaker 1: more obvious in snow and other conditions that just highlight blood.
Speaker 1: But overall, you've got to be careful not to overestimate
Speaker 1: how much blood loss is actually happening. But you gotta
Speaker 1: also try to understand it's very likely that the blood
Speaker 1: loss hasn't stopped. Even if you do lose the blood trailer,
Speaker 1: you can't find the next drop. Now, I know, blood
Speaker 1: law can and does stop in certain situations, blood clots up,
Speaker 1: things get in the way. You know, a little bit
Speaker 1: of intestine or fat in the exit wound can change
Speaker 1: things in a hurry, But mostly it probably hasn't stopped
Speaker 1: on the blood trail you're on. This is crossroads time
Speaker 1: on blood trails, and if you haven't been there yet,
Speaker 1: keep shooting. It will happen. The blood seems to dry
Speaker 1: up at some point, and that's when people start to
Speaker 1: go a little rogue. You do have to try to
Speaker 1: find the next blood, but most people seem to think
Speaker 1: that's an immediate sign they should start looking for a
Speaker 1: whole deer carcass. This also gets them into the mode
Speaker 1: of walking pretty fast and looking, and while there is
Speaker 1: time for grid searching, it's not usually when you haven't
Speaker 1: found a new drop of blood in the last few minutes.
Speaker 1: In this situation, remind yourself that the blood likely did
Speaker 1: not dry up, but instead you're just sing it. That's
Speaker 1: the most likely scenario. Instead of walking ahead twenty five
Speaker 1: yards and shining your flashlight around, spend time at last blood.
Speaker 1: Get on your hands and knees, Look not only at
Speaker 1: the ground, but at the vegetation around you. Think about
Speaker 1: what you might be getting wrong, Like maybe your bucks
Speaker 1: seemed to be headed straight for the river, which would
Speaker 1: make sense, but now there seems to be no more
Speaker 1: blood in that direction. Did he decide not to follow
Speaker 1: the rules and go somewhere else to lay up? Was
Speaker 1: he never really headed there to begin with. I've seen
Speaker 1: wounded deer do everything they weren't supposed to do, go uphill, downhill,
Speaker 1: cross water, cut straight back on their trail, which is
Speaker 1: the worst. They do all kinds of stuff. They have
Speaker 1: a brain, they have four legs, and they are in
Speaker 1: a serious survival situation after we shoot them. In this case,
Speaker 1: if last blood has you really stumped, start circling nearby,
Speaker 1: not twenty five yards out, but maybe like three yards out.
Speaker 1: Try to pick up the direction your dear went, because
Speaker 1: it went somewhere. If it backtracked, it will eventually peel
Speaker 1: off the original trail, which is when your sign marketing
Speaker 1: job really comes into play. Now, if you didn't mark
Speaker 1: the original blood well, you might find yourself really confused here.
Speaker 1: It's also important to note that, depending on the entrance
Speaker 1: exit and the type of hit, uphill travel or downhill
Speaker 1: travel might greatly slow the flow of blood or increase
Speaker 1: it level travel might as well pay attention to what
Speaker 1: the blood looks like on every part of the trail,
Speaker 1: so you know whether it seems to increase or decrease
Speaker 1: due to some direction, and what the overall frequency seems
Speaker 1: to be at those times. Now, this might seem like overkill,
Speaker 1: but it's so much better to always be on blood
Speaker 1: than to ever not be on blood. If you do
Speaker 1: truly lose the blood and you feel like you've exhausted
Speaker 1: your options near last blood, then then it's time to
Speaker 1: think are the conditions right for a grid search? Yet?
Speaker 1: Is the deer going to be fine if you back
Speaker 1: out and wait till morning to pick it up again
Speaker 1: in daylight? How far has the deer actually gone? What
Speaker 1: kind of headspace are you in a few years ago,
Speaker 1: I shot a good buck on public lane in Iowa.
Speaker 1: I hit him through the shoulder, which was not ideal,
Speaker 1: but it also looked like it shouldn't matter. The penetration
Speaker 1: was pretty good, and he looked like a dead deer
Speaker 1: running away. When I started blood trailing him. The whole
Speaker 1: thing looked like a really done deal until he got
Speaker 1: to a part of a trail that went up a
Speaker 1: slight bank along the river. There I lost the blood,
Speaker 1: and with my head lamps, I looked and I looked,
Speaker 1: and I looked, and I got frustrated. I got angry
Speaker 1: with myself for not making a better shot. I finally
Speaker 1: just left. I knew i'd have better luck in the morning,
Speaker 1: and I felt like that was a dead deer out
Speaker 1: there somewhere, but that I was also around a bunch
Speaker 1: of coyotes and was just full of anxiety that comes
Speaker 1: in such situations. In the morning, I had to wait
Speaker 1: for another hunter to wrap up before I could go in,
Speaker 1: because I didn't want to mess up his hunt. And
Speaker 1: when I did, I walked into the last blood and
Speaker 1: I looked over and saw my buck dead as disco,
Speaker 1: as Randy Newberg likes to say, laying not ten yards away.
Speaker 1: I honestly must have walked by that buck twenty times
Speaker 1: in the night, but I wasn't really looking, if you
Speaker 1: know what I mean. The whole thing got a thousand
Speaker 1: times easier in daylight for obvious reasons. Even though he
Speaker 1: was kind of hold up in some really tall grass,
Speaker 1: I still should have found him. If you can't wait,
Speaker 1: or you feel like a nighttime grid searches right, then
Speaker 1: keep it tight. People often get way too far apart
Speaker 1: and the thing is wounded. Prey animals often hide as
Speaker 1: best they can when they are as vulnerable as they are.
Speaker 1: After we shoot them, they'll tuck into dead falls occur
Speaker 1: up in the tall grass like that Iowa buck did.
Speaker 1: They are surprisingly easy to overlook. Hell, I shot a
Speaker 1: dough one time in Minnesota on some public land here
Speaker 1: in the Cities while I was muzzle loader hunting. That
Speaker 1: just absolutely disappeared on me. I felt like I tend
Speaker 1: ringed her and I didn't see her take off with
Speaker 1: the rest of the deer, but I couldn't find her
Speaker 1: in a field of knee high grass. It was odd
Speaker 1: until I realized, in the melee of the shot and
Speaker 1: with all those animals scattering, that she had run damn
Speaker 1: here next to me and tipped over. I mean she
Speaker 1: was like right next to me, and I was missing
Speaker 1: her looking too far out and overdriving my headlights, so
Speaker 1: to speak. All right, back to grid searching. Keep it tight,
Speaker 1: keep it planned, turn on your tracks on on X,
Speaker 1: mark your spots, go slow. Don't just focus on looking
Speaker 1: for a whole dead deer, but also keep an eye
Speaker 1: out for more blood or for running tracks. Do this
Speaker 1: especially when your grid search takes you across some kind
Speaker 1: of obvious deer trail. There's something out there that could
Speaker 1: clue you into keeping the whole trail going. You want
Speaker 1: to find it. If you grid search at night with
Speaker 1: no luck, get back in there at first light and
Speaker 1: carry your binoculars. I carry them during all daylight blood trailing,
Speaker 1: so I can scan the trail ahead for blood and
Speaker 1: can scan the woods ahead for a dead deer or
Speaker 1: a bedded wounded deer. Dealing with the wounded deer is
Speaker 1: another story, likely fodder for a follow up podcast at
Speaker 1: some point, so I'm not going to get into it here.
Speaker 1: Suffice it to say, the farther away he is when
Speaker 1: you spot him, the more options you have for a
Speaker 1: follow up. If it's at all possible. It's also worth
Speaker 1: saying a few other things that I absolutely believe good
Speaker 1: lights are your friend. I keep a whole blood trailing
Speaker 1: tote in my truck all season long, and you better
Speaker 1: believe I carry good lights and extra batteries. Giving up
Speaker 1: on a blood trail because I don't have enough juice
Speaker 1: to power my lights is not an option, and it
Speaker 1: shouldn't be for you either. I like a bright headlamp
Speaker 1: at all times, but also a really bright handheld flashlight.
Speaker 1: I usually keep a small backpack in my blood trailing toad,
Speaker 1: and while I rarely remember to stock it with gutting gloves,
Speaker 1: that's a good idea too. It's also, as I've mentioned,
Speaker 1: a really good idea to have backup batteries or whatever
Speaker 1: size your flashlights use. There are some quality lights out
Speaker 1: there that are rechargeable, too, but I don't like them
Speaker 1: for blood trailing. On the brightest setting, they tend to
Speaker 1: burn out pretty quickly, and that's not ideal. They are
Speaker 1: great for around camp and getting into an out of stands,
Speaker 1: but for real nighttime blood trailing work, I like something
Speaker 1: that operates off of batteries that can be replaced in
Speaker 1: twenty seconds. During the track job. And it should also
Speaker 1: be said, if you have the option to bring in
Speaker 1: a dog, do so. It's not legal in every state
Speaker 1: and the rules very quite a bit, but generally speaking,
Speaker 1: a well trained tracking dog is going to make the
Speaker 1: best human tracker look like a joke. The key there, though,
Speaker 1: is well trained, and it depends on how much you've
Speaker 1: messed with the trail already. It's also dependent on being
Speaker 1: able to call someone who will be available if it's
Speaker 1: an option in your neck of the woods. Keep a
Speaker 1: tracker's number handy, and keep yourself ready to back out
Speaker 1: quickly if you feel like the trailer is going to
Speaker 1: be a tough one. As long as the deer is
Speaker 1: dead and the dog is decent at the job, it's
Speaker 1: almost almost a guarantee they'll figure it out. Now, the
Speaker 1: time that has passed, the rain that has fallen, and
Speaker 1: probably some other factors I'm not thinking of, can complicate
Speaker 1: the whole thing and take it from a no doubt
Speaker 1: find to a finger crossing ordeal. That's reality, but it's
Speaker 1: not an excuse to not try everything possible to find
Speaker 1: your deer. Lastly, I'll say this knowledge is great, but
Speaker 1: experience is king. If you have the chance to blood trail,
Speaker 1: do it and pay attention. Learn from each blood trail,
Speaker 1: the easy ones, the difficult ones. Get experience. The more
Speaker 1: you do, the more confident you'll be when things suddenly
Speaker 1: start to break bad and it's midnight and you're in
Speaker 1: the middle of the wood. It's with a frustrated buddy
Speaker 1: who two hours ago thought he'd be calling a taxidermist
Speaker 1: and is now thinking that maybe he was meant to
Speaker 1: play pickleball instead of hunt. Good luck out there on
Speaker 1: those blood trails this season. I hope they work out
Speaker 1: for you. I really do, and I hope you tune
Speaker 1: in next week because I'm going to talk about what
Speaker 1: the options are for getting your dear out of the
Speaker 1: woods once you do find him. That's it for this week,
Speaker 1: my friends. I'm Tony Peterson has been the Wire to
Speaker 1: Hunt Foundations podcast, which has brought to you by First Light.
Speaker 1: As I always thank you so much for your support
Speaker 1: and if you want to get a little bit more
Speaker 1: of a white tail fix, feel free to check out
Speaker 1: Mark's new show on the Meat eat Or YouTube channel,
Speaker 1: which is called Deer Country. You can also visit the
Speaker 1: Wire to Hunt YouTube channel for how to videos. And
Speaker 1: go to the meat eator dot com slash wired to
Speaker 1: read all kinds of white tail related articles.