Stubborn perseverance is the best quality to have while tracking/trailing wounded game. I’ve seen several so called “great hunters and trackers” that quit after an hour or two just because they were tired and began to think they didn’t have as good a hit as they thought, only to have some one else find their animal a day or two later on or in the next season within 50-200 feet of where they quit. We owe it to the animals we hunt to follow up our shots tell we know for sure that our hit was a non lethal hit, if your not sure, you damn well keep lookin!

Not finding a poorly hit animal would/has ruined an entire season for me. Takes along time to get over not finding an animal you shot/killed and are unable to honer properly by utilizing them completely.

Irritates the heck out of me!! 😡

Nice to see some one with the “Stubborn perseverance” that actually matters.:D

Good job!

Troy

Great job sticking with that one!

It’s not just “blood trailing”, either, as the sign might not be blood at all.

I took a nice buck last year during the firearms season (WebMom, it’s not a discussion outside the OP, but the reference is vital). The shot felt good, and the buck was with two other deer. All three of them crashed into the brush, and after a few minutes the other two filtered back out very quietly and alone.

When I got to where the buck was at the shot, I looked around for sign. I found a clump of white hair, and no blood. By the coloration and feel of the hair, I had either made a really good shot, or a really bad shot (no chance in between). I could see the kicked up leaves where all three deer left into the brush, but unfortunately, no way to tell which was which.

For the next hour, I was mostly crawling along the trail that I though belonged to the buck looking for any sign at all. I never once found a single drop of blood. What I did find, very sparsely, were white hairs like those at the shot site, and most of those were single hairs along that trail.

It took me over an hour to find that buck, even though he’d traveled less than 75 yards from where he was shot. The bullet had gone in very low, raking forward on a hard quartering away shot. The entry was just into the white hair behind the bottom of the rib cage. The bullet dead centered the heart and flattened out on the breastbone. Not a single drop of blood hit the ground, and there was almost no blood on the animal at all.

Had I not paid close attention to the sign that was there and trailed that sign, ignoring the lack of blood, I’d have lost a very fine animal.

Many times, the hunt truly begins after the shot. That hunt will test more about a hunter and his/her will, desire, and ethics than most any hunt before the shot ever could.

Quick tip (Especially for treestand hunters): Use your compass to immediately take a bearing from your tree to the last location where you saw the critter, or where you heard the last crash. Things look a whole lot different from the ground, and this can really help finding blood, the arrow, or the animal.

Carry your compass and learn to use it. I use a Silva Ranger for everything, but any orienteering or lensatic compass would work.

Decoding a trail, with blood spoor or not, is a “learned” thing, I think. The more one does it, the better they become.

I know guys who get so fired up after any shot, they’re in a bewildered state… One chap is color blind and can’t see RED. He won’t go out if he can’t have someone on call or near by to help trail.

Around here, there is so much “checkerboard” of posted ground around where most hunt, that it’s a crap shoot on a marginal hit. Best you can do is ask, be turned down, and then see the myriad of lights out where they refused to let you look for your deer, assuming that they went for it. At least it will get attention to be found.

Worse case is that nobody ever looks! That happens too.

Liver shot critters often leave NO blood… and if not left and jumped are GONE! Been on a number of such sad trails!