How to Find a Buck Deer That’s Hit with Todd Amenrud
What to Do if the Deer’s Trail Ends
 Editor’s Note: Todd Amen rud of Ham Lake, Wisconsin, the director of public relations for Mossy Oak BioLogic, has taken many deer with his bow and never has failed to recover an animal he has arrowed. Even if you’re a master hunter and an excellent shot, if you fail to recover your deer, your hunt will be less than successful. In this week’s upload, Amenrud will teach us all how to recover the whitetails we shoot - with our bows or our guns.
One certainty about the whitetail, however, is that he is unpredictable. Once I followed a trail until it ran out and then backtracked that same trail and picked up a trail leading-off the main trail. I realized the buck hadrun to a certain point in the woods, turned around, come back down that same trail and then had taken-off in another direction from that trail. Often if the blood trail runs out, and you search and can’t locate the deer, you can walk back down the trail you’ve come up and look for blood off the side of the trail where the deer has backtracked and gone in another direction. This occurrence is not common, but it does happen. Too, when the trail runs out, you can make a wide circle, return to the starting point, retrace the trail and look for trails leading off the main trail. Then you may locate your buck. In all my recoveries, I’ve had only two deer run a backtrack on me, but I was able to find both deer because I retraced the trails.
If you’re hunting deer in hilly terrain, and the blood trails runs out, start searching for your deer down the hill in thick cover. Many times the buck w ill pick a thick-cover bedding site to stay in when he’s hurt and injured. If he has the choice of exerting less energy or climbing uphill, he’ll go in the downhill direction. To learn if the deer is running or moving quickly, examine the drops of blood. If the animal is moving when the blood falls, the drop of blood will hit and slide forward. The little end of the blood is where it hits the ground or the leaf. The bigger portion of the blood will point the direction in which the deer is traveling.
Tomorrow: Recovering Deer in Water |
