Speaker 1: As a guide and hunter, I've spent thousands of days
Speaker 1: in the field. This show is about translating my hard
Speaker 1: won experiences into tips and tactics they'll get you closer
Speaker 1: to your ultimate goal success in the field. I'm Remy Warren.
Speaker 1: This is cutting the distance. There are a lot of
Speaker 1: hunting skills that are necessary for a successful hunt that
Speaker 1: happened after the trigger is pulled where the arrow is released.
Speaker 1: So just picture this real quick. You're on the mountain.
Speaker 1: You've stalked in with your bow on a great mule
Speaker 1: dear buck, drew back, picked a spot and let the
Speaker 1: arrow fly. Your arrow connected? What do you do? How
Speaker 1: do you proceed? Last week we talked about shot placement.
Speaker 1: This week, I want to cover everything after the shot,
Speaker 1: including how to interpret that hit and how to track
Speaker 1: and approach it down to animal, as well as some
Speaker 1: standard weight times for different shots. But first I want
Speaker 1: to share what I consider the craziest track job I've
Speaker 1: ever done. It happened on a late season archery hunt
Speaker 1: for mule deer in Montana. This particular hunt in Montana
Speaker 1: was late season, during the rut, cold, in a very
Speaker 1: low density unit. So what did I decide to do
Speaker 1: during the general rifle season, I decided to go out
Speaker 1: and hunt with my bow. Now, that might not make
Speaker 1: sense to most people, and it sometimes doesn't even make
Speaker 1: sense to me, but I love the added challenge of it,
Speaker 1: and I love chasing mule deer with my bow. So
Speaker 1: I figured, look, I know this area really well. I
Speaker 1: decided to take a week off from guiding and just
Speaker 1: focus on hunting deer. And I thought, I've got a
Speaker 1: few things working for me. It's the rut. There's probably
Speaker 1: not very many people out there chasing him right now.
Speaker 1: And I thought, well, if I'm gonna be out hunting anyways,
Speaker 1: it'd be cool to try to get a deer with
Speaker 1: my bow. Now. If that doesn't sound challenging enough, I
Speaker 1: also don't know why I did it. Decided to film
Speaker 1: the whole thing solo. So a lot of things working
Speaker 1: against me, but a few things working for me, the
Speaker 1: rut factor and the knowledge of the area. I really
Speaker 1: felt like I could be successful. So I started out hunting.
Speaker 1: Started out looking in some places that I hadn't got
Speaker 1: a chance to hunt for a long time, but knew
Speaker 1: that I'd found bucks there in the past and was
Speaker 1: turning up very, very very few deer. The temperatures dropped
Speaker 1: a couple of the days it was below zero, and
Speaker 1: then it started to warm up around twenty degrees fahrenheit.
Speaker 1: After about three days of not seeing well seeing one
Speaker 1: dear not seeing much um, I continued to just check
Speaker 1: different spots and go to different places. I ended up
Speaker 1: finding a pocket of does and a good buck in
Speaker 1: one can and that I knew had a little bit
Speaker 1: higher deer densities for the unit compared to some of
Speaker 1: the other places that I was checking out. So I decided, well,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna keep hunting this spot until I find the
Speaker 1: buck that I want because there's does here, it's low density,
Speaker 1: so I'm expecting that those does will start to attract
Speaker 1: bucks as the rep kicks off, and I'll keep going
Speaker 1: back to that spot in checking. Trouble with it is
Speaker 1: it's not really great glassing country because it's fairly heavily timbered,
Speaker 1: but is good for still hunting where I could just
Speaker 1: kind of sneak along through old logging roads they have
Speaker 1: no driving access, and then work ridges and other things
Speaker 1: into betting areas and areas where I figured there might
Speaker 1: be better concentrations of does, maybe drawing some of these
Speaker 1: bucks out of the bigger mountains for the rut. Well,
Speaker 1: it paid off. It worked. I found a giant buck,
Speaker 1: a buck that I would have been happy shooting with
Speaker 1: a rifle buck that I've been happy shooting in a
Speaker 1: trophy area or one of the top units in the state.
Speaker 1: And I just so happened to stumble on this buck
Speaker 1: with my bow in my hand. And when I spotted him,
Speaker 1: I was first looking at this group of does, and
Speaker 1: he came out of the timber and he was pretty
Speaker 1: close within range. He ended up pushing a dough away.
Speaker 1: I got in, made my stock, snuck up there, drew back.
Speaker 1: Everything looked great. You kind of turned and looked at
Speaker 1: me as I drew back, but I knew his attention
Speaker 1: was more on the does and that little bit of movement.
Speaker 1: There was actually quite a few doughs around me. So
Speaker 1: you know, whether he pegged me and thought, oh that's
Speaker 1: a danger or not, it was too late. At this point.
Speaker 1: The arrow was on his way. The shot looked good.
Speaker 1: The buck was kind of up on a ridge and
Speaker 1: he ran off and over and down. He did like
Speaker 1: a buck, you know, like bucked his back legs up
Speaker 1: and ran ran away. And I thought to myself, sweet,
Speaker 1: that was a perfect shot. Everything looked perfect about it,
Speaker 1: the way the buck acted where I thought I saw
Speaker 1: the arrow hit his body position, everything looked really good.
Speaker 1: So in that scenario, you know, normally with a bow shot,
Speaker 1: if let's say the best shot kind of talks about
Speaker 1: it before, but like a double lung shot. But maybe
Speaker 1: that deer would expire within fifteen minutes at the most.
Speaker 1: So it was in the evening time. I didn't want
Speaker 1: it to get too late. I figured, oh, that deer
Speaker 1: has got to be piled up, so I gave it
Speaker 1: standard maybe fifteen minutes or so. I started walking up
Speaker 1: found the blood. Looked around from my araw, but thought, well,
Speaker 1: maybe it's sailed through. Um I might not find it
Speaker 1: right here, but I had a great blood trail analyze.
Speaker 1: The blood had like bubbles in it, so I knew, okay,
Speaker 1: it was a lung shot. Perfect. This deer should just
Speaker 1: be piled up. Followed a trail. There was some snow
Speaker 1: and then some dry, but this trail was super easy
Speaker 1: to follow. Followed it to the first spot and there
Speaker 1: was a bed. I thought, while I'm following the trail,
Speaker 1: the winds at my back I thought, well, maybe he
Speaker 1: just fell over here, and then got up ran a
Speaker 1: little ways, and then I found a piece of the air,
Speaker 1: like the back half of the air broken off, so
Speaker 1: I knew the air was still in him. Must have
Speaker 1: hit the opposite shoulder on the other side, broken off. Whatever.
Speaker 1: But I decided, well, before it gets too dark, I'm
Speaker 1: just gonna keep following this budget. He should just be
Speaker 1: within twenty yards if you're followed a little ways, and
Speaker 1: it started kind of going uphill. At that point, I thought,
Speaker 1: that's really strange. But oh man, you know it's not
Speaker 1: necessarily uphill, just more level. So I thought, well, he's
Speaker 1: got to be right in this canyon. Followed it for
Speaker 1: maybe thirty to fifty more yards, and there was another
Speaker 1: bed in this snow. Okay, this is weird. I mean,
Speaker 1: it wasn't making any sense to me, so I decided
Speaker 1: maybe I just pushed this buck out of his second bed.
Speaker 1: This isn't good. So I decided to wait a little
Speaker 1: bit longer, and then right before dark, followed it from
Speaker 1: that second bed, and figure should be expired by now
Speaker 1: for sure. Followed that second bed and the tracks started
Speaker 1: going uphill, but it was still bleeding at that point
Speaker 1: I said, Okay, this is stupid. I need to pull
Speaker 1: out of here and come back in the morning. So,
Speaker 1: after not sleeping very well that night, watching the video,
Speaker 1: just trying to analyze that everything still looked good, I decided,
Speaker 1: all right, I mean, there's no reason I shouldn't find
Speaker 1: this deer. I go back the next day and pick
Speaker 1: up tracking where I left off. Luckily, it did snow
Speaker 1: a little bit, but it was just a light snow,
Speaker 1: and I could still see the blood and the tracks.
Speaker 1: It was like not even a just a light dusting,
Speaker 1: so everything was fine. The strange thing was is I
Speaker 1: could see where the deer bedded, and then he ran
Speaker 1: up and bedded again, and I followed those tracks, and
Speaker 1: he ran and bedded again, and there was blood this
Speaker 1: entire way until he got to the top, and in
Speaker 1: the beds there would be blood, but I'd be following
Speaker 1: the tracks in the snow, then there'd be dry spots,
Speaker 1: and then I'd catch tracks again in the snow. Then
Speaker 1: the tracks led to a another group of deer, and
Speaker 1: there was just tracks everywhere. So everywhere that I found
Speaker 1: a bed, I found blood. But at this point now
Speaker 1: I lost the blood on the tracks, so now I'm
Speaker 1: assuming in my head, I'm like, okay, well, maybe the
Speaker 1: buck I've I've seen it happen before where the bucks
Speaker 1: so rutted up. It didn't really know it was hit.
Speaker 1: They're fighting their their testosterone levels are just super high.
Speaker 1: Maybe he got on a hot dough track and then
Speaker 1: just kind of started following this dough and I don't
Speaker 1: know why he didn't bleed out. Maybe the hit wasn't
Speaker 1: where I thought. I definitely was sure that I hit
Speaker 1: it in the lungs, So I don't know what's going
Speaker 1: on at this point. There's tracks going everywhere. I'm most
Speaker 1: of the way up the mountain now, and I'm like, okay, now,
Speaker 1: I don't know which tracks to follow. So I pick
Speaker 1: one set of tracks, follow those tracks out for a
Speaker 1: mile or whatever, come back, find another set of tracks.
Speaker 1: Follow those tracks, and there's like thirty deer tracks here.
Speaker 1: I tried to base him off of the size of
Speaker 1: the tracks and his gate, but there was other buck
Speaker 1: tracks in there. There was just a mess of deer tracks.
Speaker 1: There's some snow, there was some no snow. It just
Speaker 1: got really difficult to track what I thought would be
Speaker 1: walking up on this buck ended up now it's midday.
Speaker 1: I'm like thinking, I'm never going to find this dear
Speaker 1: and racking in my brand. What could have happened? I'm
Speaker 1: like thinking about, Okay, I just can't give up. Just
Speaker 1: follow every set of tracks i'd actually recorded on my phone.
Speaker 1: How many I was. There's a lot of miles logged
Speaker 1: going back and forth, just walking around finding different sets
Speaker 1: of tracks, trying to find blood. I actually found a
Speaker 1: set of tracks and there was some blood in around
Speaker 1: the tracks, and that got me on a detour for
Speaker 1: a while until I could find a good print where
Speaker 1: I could see that it wasn't obstructed and it turned
Speaker 1: out to be a dough So that deear just happened
Speaker 1: to have whatever scraped itself on a stick or who
Speaker 1: knows what another deer, just a couple of drops of blood.
Speaker 1: That kind of took me on a d tour. I
Speaker 1: get back to the bait, back to where I last
Speaker 1: tracked the buck for sure, and then followed another set
Speaker 1: in a different direction. Sure enough, long story short, I
Speaker 1: end up finding the buck. Now you're probably like, well,
Speaker 1: what happened? So after analyzing what had happened, the shot
Speaker 1: looked good. Now, after I analyzed what went on. This
Speaker 1: is the crazy part because I've never seen this happen
Speaker 1: and this is not standard. Now why am I telling
Speaker 1: this story about this deer on a recovery podcast, Because
Speaker 1: I think a lot of recovery you have to play
Speaker 1: it a certain way. And I did a few things
Speaker 1: wrong in the initial setup, and then there's just bad luck.
Speaker 1: So here's the bad luck. What had happened as I shot,
Speaker 1: the deer kind of started to quarter away. Now, if
Speaker 1: I would have shot a little bit further back, it
Speaker 1: would have been a problem. I probably would have gone
Speaker 1: through both lungs. What ended up happening was the arrow
Speaker 1: hit one lung and then somehow pinned into the front
Speaker 1: shoulder on the opposite side at the first bed. Either
Speaker 1: the deer pulled it out or something. The arrow had
Speaker 1: come out just part of the arrow, And when I
Speaker 1: found the dear dead, he had part of his lung
Speaker 1: actually outside of the cavity, which plugged the hole. So
Speaker 1: by plugging the entrance hole, it didn't allow the lungs
Speaker 1: to collapse and then closed off the wound. That's why
Speaker 1: I stopped getting blood, but would get blood in the bed.
Speaker 1: So up until the first point, it was a blood trail.
Speaker 1: Like every other blood trail, I followed where the deer
Speaker 1: should be gone expired immediately, this dear. Somehow it's lung
Speaker 1: pulled out and closed the wound off, not allowing the
Speaker 1: lungs to collapse and not allowing it to bleed out,
Speaker 1: in which case then it probably got on other deer tracks,
Speaker 1: continued to rut, and then made its way miles away
Speaker 1: from where it started until things got messed up again.
Speaker 1: So I ended up actually finding the deer, but only
Speaker 1: because I just didn't give up, because I knew what
Speaker 1: I saw with the shot, and I knew from the
Speaker 1: initial tracking and having tracked enough, Dear, that that deer
Speaker 1: was going to be dead. Now, if there wasn't snow,
Speaker 1: I doubt that I ever would have found that deer.
Speaker 1: It would have been going through my head what happened?
Speaker 1: Why did I lose that dear? This doesn't make any
Speaker 1: sense now, is luck and persistence would have it? I
Speaker 1: ended up continuing to search because I knew what I
Speaker 1: saw and ended up recovering that dear. How you proceed
Speaker 1: after that arrow or bullet is released and impacts the
Speaker 1: animal can greatly affect your successive recovery. Now I want
Speaker 1: to cover a few things that I think are just imperative,
Speaker 1: including the first moves you make after making that shot,
Speaker 1: and then we'll go into a little bit of how
Speaker 1: to interpret the hit, what some of the signs on
Speaker 1: the ground, then as far as what different things to
Speaker 1: look for in the blood trail as well as on
Speaker 1: your arrow, and then just some tips on how to
Speaker 1: track and a few different scenarios. And then after that
Speaker 1: maybe we'll we'll kind of talk about some weight times
Speaker 1: and how to best proceed to make sure that you
Speaker 1: recover that animal. The first thing I do after I
Speaker 1: make that shot, and this is a very important and
Speaker 1: often overlooked step, is I mark where I shot from.
Speaker 1: I also take a mental note of where the animal
Speaker 1: was standing. I'll tell myself something about specific of where
Speaker 1: it was, or I'll pull out my camera and take
Speaker 1: a picture. If you've got your phone in your pocket,
Speaker 1: take a picture of where the animal is standing, because
Speaker 1: you're gonna probably reference that spot multiple times. I also
Speaker 1: remember the yardage at which the animal was, so I'll
Speaker 1: mark where I'm standing, whether it's pull something on my
Speaker 1: pocket and tie it off, take a spare arrow and
Speaker 1: stick it in the ground. I'm gonna mark where I'm
Speaker 1: standing now out when I'm bow hunting, even if I
Speaker 1: know I made a perfect shot, thirty minutes is my
Speaker 1: normal weight time, so I just give it time to
Speaker 1: calm down, stay quiet, don't proceed right away, just mark
Speaker 1: where I'm at and wait. There's a lot of reasons
Speaker 1: for that, but I think that thirty minutes with a
Speaker 1: perfect shot is a good just Yeah, might expire ten
Speaker 1: or fifteen minutes, whatever, but give yourself a little bit
Speaker 1: extra time. Even some guys go forty five minutes, but
Speaker 1: it just depends on a lot of factors. But I
Speaker 1: always generally go thirty minutes at the minimum. Then I'll
Speaker 1: mark where I'm at, and I'll range where the animal
Speaker 1: was and then make some mental notes of where that animals.
Speaker 1: Do that while you're waiting, even before I go look
Speaker 1: for my arrow or whatever. The reason for that is
Speaker 1: because once you get to the spot where you're gonna
Speaker 1: be looking for your arrow, for blood, for tracks, you
Speaker 1: can range back and figure out where you were and
Speaker 1: kind of triangulate your position to get exactly where that
Speaker 1: animal is standing. The next step is now going to
Speaker 1: be look for sign. Now you should have a good
Speaker 1: indication of where you hit whatever you're shooting at. But
Speaker 1: with as fast as bows are now, or maybe your
Speaker 1: rifle hunting and you're by yourself or you don't have
Speaker 1: someone watching, it can be fairly hard to tell. Maybe
Speaker 1: where you hit you might not have seen your arrow
Speaker 1: in flight, it might have been too fast, maybe the
Speaker 1: lighting was weird. A lot of places you can use
Speaker 1: light up knocks now on your arrows, which are great,
Speaker 1: but some states still don't allow it. And if you've
Speaker 1: got a fast bow, yeah, you probably aren't gonna see
Speaker 1: where your arrow hits. So what you're gonna base most
Speaker 1: of the intail on and when you're gonna make your
Speaker 1: move is going to be all based on how that
Speaker 1: animal reacted at the shot. So a perfect shot would
Speaker 1: be say lungs or heart. I find that most time
Speaker 1: when they're shot like that, it's just a neck out
Speaker 1: straight run, full speed away. A lot of people say,
Speaker 1: like if it if he gets heart shot, they buck.
Speaker 1: That is true. I've seen him do that though on
Speaker 1: other shots as well, Like if they get hit in
Speaker 1: the leg, that sometimes happens, but for the most part
Speaker 1: heart shot, they'll buck or kick and then run full speed.
Speaker 1: If you shoot a little bit further back. Something like
Speaker 1: hunching up from the back might indicate that you hit
Speaker 1: too far back, maybe in the intestines, maybe in the liver,
Speaker 1: or then anything that involves favoring aside, like um favoring
Speaker 1: a leg or some kind of weird reaction that way
Speaker 1: might mean hitting it in the leg, breaking a shoulder.
Speaker 1: Those kind of body signals will be your first indication
Speaker 1: of where did you hit that animal. So if you know,
Speaker 1: shoot it looked like I hit it back, now you're
Speaker 1: gonna want to wait longer. So let's first talk about
Speaker 1: the weight times in tracking and knowing where you hit.
Speaker 1: If I shoot something perfect like I said thirty minutes, now,
Speaker 1: if you if your rifle hunting and you watch it drop,
Speaker 1: or your bow hunting you watch it run over and
Speaker 1: fall over day, that's completely different. This is just if
Speaker 1: you shoot it runs off and you don't really know,
Speaker 1: especially with the bow. With a rifle, it might be
Speaker 1: different because you might, depending on the terrain, you might
Speaker 1: be able to get a follow up shot, especially if
Speaker 1: it just ran over. Rise it's open country, get over
Speaker 1: there fast and look for it and make sure it's
Speaker 1: not running out or or give yourself a good idea
Speaker 1: where it's going. But we're just gonna narrow this down
Speaker 1: to bow hunting. Right now, if you think that you
Speaker 1: have made a perfect shot, thirty minutes is my standard
Speaker 1: weight time for shots that I know, okay, I should
Speaker 1: just walk over there and be piled up within twenty yards. Now,
Speaker 1: if you're talking you think you maybe hit it in
Speaker 1: the liver or made not as good as a shot,
Speaker 1: I would give it two to three hours on liver shots,
Speaker 1: and then anything further back from the liver that's six
Speaker 1: to twelve hours in my opinion. And then you've got
Speaker 1: shots that are look good in our muscle shots, and
Speaker 1: that might if you know you hit it in a muscle,
Speaker 1: the recovery on that may not be fatal, but it
Speaker 1: might be where you could restock and re find that animal.
Speaker 1: So sometimes on that in those particular instances, I would
Speaker 1: error on the side of tracking sooner rather than later,
Speaker 1: or at least getting to a point where I can
Speaker 1: start looking for it and then give it some time
Speaker 1: to bed down, but not get too far ahead. Start.
Speaker 1: So we've marked where we shot from and we know that, okay,
Speaker 1: it looked like a good hit. So now We're gonna
Speaker 1: go to where the animal was and inspect the ground,
Speaker 1: inspect the arrow. Hopefully we can find it, and then
Speaker 1: proceed from there as well, so to confirm what we
Speaker 1: think we already know based on how the animal reacted
Speaker 1: from the shot. If you can find your arrow, that's
Speaker 1: a great sign of where you made your hit. Now,
Speaker 1: a few things to think about when you pick up
Speaker 1: your arrow. Here's what you're looking for. Well, if it's
Speaker 1: gritty and bloody, that's probably It depends on the position
Speaker 1: of the animal and how good that shot. If it
Speaker 1: was quartering away hard, it's gritty and then some real
Speaker 1: dark blood, well you probably maybe hit of the intestine,
Speaker 1: but you probably got the liver and the lungs as well,
Speaker 1: depending on how hard it was quartering away. If it
Speaker 1: just has bile and green material, not a lot of blood,
Speaker 1: then you hit it way further back, maybe in the
Speaker 1: colon or whatever. Now, if it's just good solid blood
Speaker 1: like red blood, could be heart, it could be lungs.
Speaker 1: And then if you get a little bit more lighter
Speaker 1: colored blood, that's probably lungs. More like pinkish colored blood.
Speaker 1: I always tend to see on lung shots. So if
Speaker 1: you can't find your arrow. Now we're just gonna have
Speaker 1: to look at the ground and what bloods they're What
Speaker 1: color is the blood? Real dark blood often indicates liver.
Speaker 1: It's almost more like a it's a really dark purple,
Speaker 1: almost like purple black color. A lighter color indicates lungs,
Speaker 1: especially if there's bubbles in it, because that oxygen in
Speaker 1: the lungs makes it a little bit lighter colored. It's
Speaker 1: more of a pink color. And then heart blood is
Speaker 1: more just pure red. But also you've got to realize too,
Speaker 1: muscle shots can be that pure red as well. So
Speaker 1: I think a lot of people mistake a muscle hit
Speaker 1: for heart or something else. But for the most part,
Speaker 1: lungs or lighter color, liver is that darker color. Once
Speaker 1: you've identified okay, where was this animal hit and verified
Speaker 1: whether your assumption is right through indications in the sign
Speaker 1: on the arrow and the sign on the ground through
Speaker 1: the blood, now time to decide. Okay, Now do I
Speaker 1: start tracking now or do I wait even longer? If
Speaker 1: you know it's a good shot, you're like, Okay, everything
Speaker 1: looked good. The signs are there. I've got light colored blood,
Speaker 1: some a little bit of a bubbly blood. There's a
Speaker 1: pretty decent blood trail. Let's follow it up right now. Now.
Speaker 1: If you think I got maybe hit the liver or
Speaker 1: even further back, now you've got to go back to
Speaker 1: those standard weight times and just be patient, because what
Speaker 1: you don't want to do is you don't want the
Speaker 1: animal to get pushed out of its bed, because what
Speaker 1: that's gonna do is gonna keep pushing the deer or
Speaker 1: whatever further and further away and leave you smaller and
Speaker 1: smaller blood rails to follow, and you're gonna be less
Speaker 1: likely to recover that animal. Now, if it just goes
Speaker 1: to one spot, runs within a hundred or so yards,
Speaker 1: and beds down, and then expires, you have a really
Speaker 1: good chance of finding that animal. Now, let's get into
Speaker 1: how to track. If you know it's a fatal hit,
Speaker 1: then you're just gonna follow the blood trail. The blood
Speaker 1: trail will lead to that animal. So many people get
Speaker 1: ahead of themselves, they start looking too fast and too frantic,
Speaker 1: and they destroy the sign and the blood trail itself
Speaker 1: and the tracks and everything while just kind of looking
Speaker 1: around randomly. So I always like to find the blood
Speaker 1: and then go from there because I know it's it's
Speaker 1: a good trail, it should lead me to the animal,
Speaker 1: and they can, even on good shots, be very difficult
Speaker 1: to find sometimes. So what I do is I find
Speaker 1: the tracks, find where the animal was, and then depending
Speaker 1: on which side it was the hit was on, or
Speaker 1: if you think, if you know you've gotta pass through,
Speaker 1: maybe we'll see it on both sides, I start looking
Speaker 1: very carefully on all the brush around on those tracks.
Speaker 1: Then what I'll do is will stay on the tracks
Speaker 1: and then confirm that I'm on its tracks by finding blood.
Speaker 1: As I go and find blood, I markt whether it's
Speaker 1: with like a dropping a pin on on X or
Speaker 1: I used to use toilet paper a lot, or some
Speaker 1: flagging that will come back and get I'll mark where
Speaker 1: the blood is because there's a lot of times where
Speaker 1: you will get off the trail, you'll start following something
Speaker 1: else that might not be that dear, and you don't realize, okay,
Speaker 1: I gotta go back to the last blood I saw
Speaker 1: and then follow that. That is how you trail an animal. Now,
Speaker 1: the practice of it, especially on great shots, that's why
Speaker 1: you make a great shot, because you don't have to
Speaker 1: blood trail something that's difficult. Most of the time, it's
Speaker 1: like a highway leading to it. It's very clear, and
Speaker 1: the animals right there within twenty or thirty yards of
Speaker 1: where you've shot. But it's those ones where maybe something
Speaker 1: weird happens, maybe you made a shot that the animal
Speaker 1: reacted funny, you you hit in the wrong, whatever stuff happens,
Speaker 1: but you should still be able to find whatever you
Speaker 1: hit because there should be some form of trail tracks
Speaker 1: blood to that animal. The key is really being patient
Speaker 1: and really staying on and marking and then going back
Speaker 1: and trying to find the trail. Now, once you lose
Speaker 1: the trail, what I do is I grid out from
Speaker 1: there looking for anything, any kind of sign, track, whatever.
Speaker 1: What I will also do is pay close attention to
Speaker 1: the tracks of that animal when it's running. How do
Speaker 1: those tracks look, what's the size of them. There's times
Speaker 1: where I've even taken a stick and measured between the tracks.
Speaker 1: So if it gets into multiple tracks running different directions,
Speaker 1: you can sometimes tell the difference between two deer if
Speaker 1: it's not a good print based on its stride, where
Speaker 1: it might have got into a dough that's a shorter body,
Speaker 1: shorter stride, and this one's a little bit longer stride
Speaker 1: than the other one, or match those strides up. Now,
Speaker 1: there are tracking jobs where you have made a shot
Speaker 1: that hit a muscle, hit something non vital, or something
Speaker 1: that you know might take a while. How I proceed
Speaker 1: always depends on a few things. So I've got my
Speaker 1: standard weight times, but there are exceptions for that. So
Speaker 1: if I shoot something in the evening and I know, well,
Speaker 1: it looked like a good shot, but now there's not
Speaker 1: a lot of predators around here, there's no chance of
Speaker 1: rain or snow tonight, most of the time I would
Speaker 1: just leave it till the morning if it's cool out,
Speaker 1: because there's no loss of meat, and you know you
Speaker 1: aren't going to push it in the dark. If you
Speaker 1: shoot it in the morning, you know you might try
Speaker 1: to wait till afternoon. Now, if it's real hot, if
Speaker 1: it's a lot of predators in your area, if it's
Speaker 1: gonna snow or rain, you may have to push those
Speaker 1: times that you would normally wait a little bit quicker.
Speaker 1: And the reason you do that is because you know
Speaker 1: that if you leave it, there's a very low likelihood
Speaker 1: of finding it the next day, where you might have
Speaker 1: a better chance of getting another shot, spotting and where
Speaker 1: it's at, and then waiting or some other form of
Speaker 1: kind of continuing to hunt for that animal and then
Speaker 1: hope to find it bedded still or maybe see it
Speaker 1: moving because you know that if you wait, you aren't
Speaker 1: going to find it, and those kind of things. You know,
Speaker 1: everything situational when it comes to hunting. But there are
Speaker 1: sometimes where it's more ethical to track earlier. But most
Speaker 1: of the time it's more ethical to wait just because
Speaker 1: you won't push it. I think that that makes a
Speaker 1: lot of sense in the moment, but it's something that
Speaker 1: I just have to talk about because there is no
Speaker 1: clear cut this is how long you wait every time.
Speaker 1: I've been places where if you leave a deer overnight,
Speaker 1: it will be completely eaten by coyotes in the morning.
Speaker 1: And there's a lot of places like that. Or there's
Speaker 1: places where you shot something and it's gonna rain now.
Speaker 1: If I am hunting and I know that it's getting
Speaker 1: toward the end of light, you know, sometimes you just
Speaker 1: have to think, Okay, if it's a marginal shot, if
Speaker 1: you don't have a great shot, wait, if you know
Speaker 1: it's raining, or it's it's currently raining, it's currently snowing
Speaker 1: and you've got a shot that's like, I gotta make
Speaker 1: a quick shot, and it might not be that great.
Speaker 1: Don't shoot, because your odds of recovering that animal go
Speaker 1: down drastically if you are tracking an animal, say you're
Speaker 1: tracking an animal that might not be hit that great.
Speaker 1: Maybe you think it's hitting the liver, maybe it's hit
Speaker 1: a little bit further back, or maybe you think you
Speaker 1: might have hit it in a muscle. You aren't sure,
Speaker 1: but it doesn't look like it's going to be immediately fatal,
Speaker 1: and you have to track early. The best thing is
Speaker 1: to have two people tracking, so one person staying on
Speaker 1: the blood, the other person out using the wind and
Speaker 1: kind of hunting and looking for that animal simultaneously. So
Speaker 1: someone's following the blood while the other person is looking
Speaker 1: ahead for the deer. Because if you're constantly looking down
Speaker 1: at the ground, tracking and you know there might be
Speaker 1: a chance that might be betted and gonna jump up again,
Speaker 1: you're probably gonna miss it if you're looking at the ground,
Speaker 1: analyzing sign and following a blood trail. So the best
Speaker 1: thing to do is to get another person. One person
Speaker 1: follow the blood because that's going to lead to where
Speaker 1: the animal is, and then you with your weapon ready
Speaker 1: or your your bow or your shotgun or whatever you're
Speaker 1: hunting with, ready to continue sneaking forward and kind of
Speaker 1: hunting for that animal, visually looking and following the best
Speaker 1: assumed direction that the animal went. Really the last thing
Speaker 1: that I would want to touch on for recovery of
Speaker 1: an animal. And this goes for whether you're rifle hunting
Speaker 1: or bow hunting. It doesn't matter. I see this happen
Speaker 1: a lot. Is the way that people walk up on
Speaker 1: a downed animal. Now, if you know that it it's
Speaker 1: down dead, completely awesome, great, it doesn't really matter as much.
Speaker 1: But especially with rifle shots, I've seen so many times
Speaker 1: people shoot something with a rifle. It might be spined
Speaker 1: or they hit it high and it just drops. Animals
Speaker 1: that just drop are generally the ones that get away
Speaker 1: because they wake up, they roll over, they run off,
Speaker 1: they don't leave a lot of blood. So the way
Speaker 1: that I approach an animal is I always approach with
Speaker 1: the wind in my face, very very carefully. I try
Speaker 1: to position my body to where its head can't see me,
Speaker 1: and that way I can get up close enough to
Speaker 1: make sure that it's expired. I Also if it's wounded
Speaker 1: or had been previously wounded and down and there's a hill,
Speaker 1: I will always come in from the bottom, as opposed
Speaker 1: to at the top from above it. So I come
Speaker 1: in from below it because that way, if it is
Speaker 1: seriously injured, it's gonna be harder for it to run uphill,
Speaker 1: so it'll get up and give you a lot more
Speaker 1: opportunity to shoot again. Or as if it's running downhill,
Speaker 1: it might run downhill fast, out of sight quickly and
Speaker 1: not give you an opportunity for a follow up shot.
Speaker 1: I just wanted to really throw out a few. It's
Speaker 1: just like a lot of tips on following up game animals.
Speaker 1: Most of them are going to be used when something
Speaker 1: is hit poorly, and that should not be very often
Speaker 1: because you're gonna listen to the last podcast and do
Speaker 1: everything in your power to make a clean, ethical kill.
Speaker 1: But there are times where things don't work right. Something happens,
Speaker 1: maybe you make a bad shot, maybe the animal jumps
Speaker 1: or arrow hits a stick on flight you just don't know,
Speaker 1: or something crazy happens, like in the Meal of Dear Story,
Speaker 1: I told where everything should have been good, but it
Speaker 1: looked like a good shot. You did the best you
Speaker 1: could with what you thought you were aiming at, and
Speaker 1: you end up hitting one lung randomly and the animal
Speaker 1: goes a lot further than you think. So just keep
Speaker 1: in mind that there are ways to increase your chance
Speaker 1: of finding an animal that's hit poorly. A lot of
Speaker 1: it comes down to the time you wait and how
Speaker 1: you interpret the sign that you see at the shot,
Speaker 1: at the blood trail, and the way that animal reacts.
Speaker 1: There is a art to tracking, and you get better
Speaker 1: at it with time and with practice, is just like
Speaker 1: anything else. I was actually very fortunate to have some
Speaker 1: experience going with some bushmen in Africa that were just trackers.
Speaker 1: I mean, hundreds of generations of people that could track,
Speaker 1: and their skills and abilities and the things that they
Speaker 1: picked up on was just uncanny, and I really tried
Speaker 1: to kind of take that into my own way of
Speaker 1: ciphering tracks and following up on animals and just understanding
Speaker 1: animals by watching them and their behaviors and a lot
Speaker 1: of the things that they do they probably can't explain
Speaker 1: to someone else how they do it. Because I found
Speaker 1: over the years, I've gotten so much better at finding
Speaker 1: and recovering animals. For people. As a guide, you get
Speaker 1: a lot of experience maybe recovering something that wasn't shot
Speaker 1: that great. You know, not because it's something you did,
Speaker 1: but maybe the person shooting got way too excited and
Speaker 1: things happen. I mean, it's it's it's the truth of it. Now,
Speaker 1: we do everything in our power so those things don't happen,
Speaker 1: but when they do, the way that you react and
Speaker 1: the things that you do right after the shot can
Speaker 1: make the difference. Things like marking where you're at, interpreting
Speaker 1: the shot, and interpreting the sign. All that stuff is
Speaker 1: just going to be key to actually making a good recovery.
Speaker 1: So that's just something to think about when you're out there.
Speaker 1: When you have an opportunity to follow up and and
Speaker 1: track something, even if you saw something just fall over,
Speaker 1: don't miss an opportunity just because you know it's dead
Speaker 1: or you made a great shot. Don't miss an opportunity
Speaker 1: to go to where the animal was shot, look at
Speaker 1: the tracks, interpret how did it jump, where did it go,
Speaker 1: what's the blood look like, even on something that's fatally shot,
Speaker 1: on whatever, Take every opportunity you can in the field
Speaker 1: to learn and get better at it. I really appreciate
Speaker 1: everybody listening as always if you get a chance. I
Speaker 1: looked through a couple of days ago, and there are
Speaker 1: some incredible comments, some great comments from everybody out there
Speaker 1: about the podcast, things that they liked, and some really
Speaker 1: good ratings, and I just really really appreciate that. Like
Speaker 1: I kind of forgot to read some of them, all right,
Speaker 1: I haven't read them in a while, and I went
Speaker 1: back and I'm like, wow, that's the reason that I'm
Speaker 1: going to keep doing this podcast. So I just want
Speaker 1: to thank everybody that's left to comment left or rating,
Speaker 1: left or review. That means so much to me. I
Speaker 1: really do appreciate that. And you know, if you're if
Speaker 1: you're listening and you haven't left one or you want
Speaker 1: to leave a rating, go to whatever app you listen
Speaker 1: to drop a good rating, leave a good comment. I
Speaker 1: just I really appreciate that. Thank you so much. And
Speaker 1: if you don't subscribe to the podcast, definitely click the
Speaker 1: subscribe button. That way, it makes it easier for you
Speaker 1: to get the new episodes as well as find them
Speaker 1: and kind of keeps the podcast going. That's the whole Like,
Speaker 1: as long as there's people listening, I'm going to keep
Speaker 1: doing it. So if you don't subscribe, subscribe. I really
Speaker 1: appreciate that. So until next week shoot straight track. Well
Speaker 1: if you don't, I don't know. Maybe by our one
Speaker 1: year anniversary in August, I will have a tagline. But
Speaker 1: until then, keep trying. H