Tracking Deer at Night

Posted at 545PM

I'm home right now collecting the appropriate lights and gear to track a deer at night.

Details to follow.

10:30 PM

I'm back home after a good four hours of following a tenuous blood trail. The last 20 yards I covered took about an hour. My hands and knees are aching and my hands are scratched up. Unfortunately it might rain some tonight making a search tomorrow near impossible, but I'll be out there.

I shot a doe at about 90 yards away. I had a good rest and the shot felt good. I had a left side presentation and I'm thinking it was quartering toward me more than I thought. From the blood trail I think my entry was in the left chest. Unfortunately I think the exit was through the liver.

I'm certain it was a lethal shot. I'm hoping I can find it in the morning


And now.... the rest of the story:

I was out yesterday morning in my tripod stand and saw three small doe. I could have shot one of them but I decided it just wasn’t big enough.

I went back in the afternoon and arrived two hours before sunset. I was sitting daydreaming enjoying the 60 degree temperatures. With the rotating seat affording potential 360 degree coverage of the woods I was watching the most likely area for deer to appear.

Right around 30 minutes before sunset I turned around in a not so stealthy way to see a deer in the corner of a field about 110 yards away. (When I’m bored and not really serious I just push off with my feet and pick them up while I spin around) I rarely see deer there although I know they come through and part of the reason for my stand placement is to cover this spot.

So what do we have? Medium size doe. Meat. Grazing. Not alarmed. Clear view with no obstructions. Good solid rest on the railing. All my shooting requirements were met. I had the scope on it when it took a few steps forward with a large tree obscuring the head and neck. I could still visualize my needed landmarks as the leg and back portion of the shoulder were still in plain sight. I decided to give the tree between us a good margin of about 3 inches. Normally, at the end of the day with dark right around the corner, I prefer an anchoring shot through a shoulder or two. However, since that shot was not possible, I decided a double lung “meat saver” shot was OK. The shot was squeezed off. It felt perfect.

The smoke cleared quickly with the breeze and I then saw three deer running directly away down a path. I assumed one of them had a lethal wound. Since I only had about 30 minutes of good light left to track I came down out of the stand right after reloading. Instead of my usual morning routine of starting at the scene of the shooting to look for hair and blood I went right to the spot the deer ran. I found blood. I started tracking.

Before long I was using a flashlight. The blood was a nice color but there wasn’t a lot of it. It was easy the first 30 yards as the red stood out nicely on the green grass. The problem started when the field ended and the reddish brown oak leaves were the predominate ground cover.

I was cussing the flashlight I had with me. It really wasn’t up to the task at hand. I decided I’d run back home and gather up some supplies and better lights. Home was only 10 minutes away.

I couldn’t find the light I really wanted and settled for some inferior non LED lights and one bright handheld searchlight I keep on the boat. I got back to business. The searchlight was working well but after 45 minutes the battery was dead. Great. I called my friend David who is also about 10 minutes away. He brought over a nice bright LED light and Lucy.

Lucy is a rambunctious chocolate lab who has done well finding deer on David’s property. We gave her a chance to prove what she was made of. Running in circles was all she was good for last night. We put her back in the truck.

Around 200 yards from the spot the deer was shot the blood trail was thin. It was a one person job to be on their hands and knees looking for blood so David went home. It took me a couple more hours to go 40 or 50 yards and I was a bit tired and discouraged. I did one sweeping search from the trails end but found nothing. I was thinking by then I had gut shot it. Was it an entry in the left lung and exit through the liver? I went home a little dejected.

I was up by 5 but there wasn’t any reason to go looking until the light got better. It was a cloudy morning and spitting rain. I got to the woods about 9. I started from the beginning and followed the trail marked with red surveyor tape. I also looked at the blood trail to get used to how it looked with more light.

By the time I was approaching the 200 yard mark I noticed the buzzards flying around ahead of me. It wasn’t far from where the trail ended last night. I made it to the end of my marked trail and instead of looking for blood I started walking toward a clearing in the direction the trail was leading.

The deer was only 30 yards from where I ended the search. I must have been real close to it during my final sweep last night.

The buzzards had only about 2 hours to find the deer and start nibbling. They got a couple of ounces of meat out of the right hindquarter and worked on an eye. Other than that all was well.

Inspecting the deer revealed a double lung shot. There was no involvement of the shoulders and the shot was in the upper half of the lungs and back toward the rear although never behind the diaphragm. In general, the shot was exactly where I was aiming.

I’ve never had a deer run this far with such a lethal shot. The deer was roughly 110lbs live weight. She was a healthy specimen and probably 2 1/2 years old.