Video: Tracking Your Archery Season Deer

Tracking Your Archery Season Deer Transcript

Steve Smith: I'm here on a game land on a late-season archery hunt, and it's about mid-morning. And roughly an hour ago, I made a shot on a doe as she was coming out of that clear cut, angling up to where she was going to bed down for the day. I didn't see her fall down, I didn't hear what sounded like her fall down. So, because of that, I haven't moved since I made that shot. I've stayed right here in the same location.

Reason being is the last thing I want to do if she is wounded is push her too far. What I'm hoping happened is that she ran off and bedded down and died, and I wanted to give her time for that to happen. So I've stayed in this same location. A couple of things I've done though is I've locked into my mind where she was standing when I took the shot, as well as the last place that I saw her before she disappeared. And I have those two places, those two landmarks in my mind, and we're going to start there.

What else I've done is I was able to call for a friend to come give me a hand, because it's always better to have an extra set of eyes and a circumstance like this. When you're out looking for blood, hoping to recover a game, a wounded animal. So to get started, I'm going to still stay here in this position, and I've asked AJ who came out with me, I've asked him to take toilet paper and mark where I tell him the deer was when I shot, and then mark where the last place I saw her was. And then we're going to start the recovery from there, go through the steps and hopefully have another deer for the freezer here in a little bit.

And the reason I use toilet paper for that, a couple of reasons. First, it's cheap, it's lightweight. It's easy to carry with me. I throw it in my backpack whenever I come out. Also, it's easy to see. From time to time, we'll be looking back just to see if we can establish the direction she was going. The toilet paper will show us wherever she was losing blood. So we'll be able to establish that course of direction. And then lastly, of course, when we leave, we'll pick it all up, take it out with us. But it is biodegradable, so in the event we miss a piece or two, we're not worried about causing any damage to these game lands.

So we have gone to where she was standing when I shot. And right off the bat, this is pretty encouraging. We got some blood here. I can see some hairs, you can see where she kicked up when she was shot. And here is the arrow. As I said, it indicates that as a pass through shot. It went through both parts of the deer.

So, we're going to have enough here to get started. I can see where I saw her last. AJ marked that spot with toilet paper. We're going to keep this spot marked and just head in that direction, very carefully, very cautiously looking for blood, looking to see if we can find that deer. And most importantly, really establishing the path of direction of where was that deer going, which direction was it headed. And then we're going to work from there and hopefully recover this deer.

Yeah, right here.

AJ: Yep.

Steve: We got blood right here then.

AJ: Right here?

Steve: Right here. Right there.

Where I thought I saw her last, we've been able to establish where she was standing when I shot. We've marked her trail coming up through here. Haven't found her yet, haven't seen her, haven't heard anything run off either though, so that's a good sign. The blood is a little dark, it looks like possibly a liver hit. And we're just still going to take our time and really cautiously work our way through here.

I'm optimistic that she was hit good and that we'll find her, but nonetheless, again, the last thing we want to do if she is wounded and hasn't died yet is push her. (So there's blood there.) We're going to take our time, walk through here very cautiously, again, scanning ahead to see if she's laying up there, but looking down, following the blood. We've got a pretty consistent blood trail so far. I know the arrow passed through, so hopefully by now, she's expired.

AJ: Here.

Steve: Here? Where? Where's it at? Here? OK. All right. Hold up. Give me one second. Yep, there we go. There we go. There's blood. Just hold up one sec. Make sure.

AJ: Right there on—

Steve: OK. There she is. And her head is down, so she's dead. OK. So, all right. There's the white belly. It was a little harder because there was snow on the ground, but that white belly is usually what you're looking for. That means that deer is dead. She’s laying on her side. Again, head is not up. If that head was up, it would mean that she’s still alive, probably gut shot, and we’d be backing out at this point. But her head is down. She’s dead.

We’re going to still take our time and walk to it pretty cautiously. I'm not going to notch an arrow or anything, because we have a lot of blow downs to walk across. So we're still going to just slowly take our time, head over in that direction. But given that I could see that belly laying up in the air and her head down, pretty confident that she’s dead.

Yep, she’s dead. OK. All right. She didn’t go far. She went about maybe 100 yards, maybe a little more. It probably took her less than 10 seconds, 10 or 15 seconds to cover that distance. She left a good blood trail, which was good for us to follow. And yes, we got a nice clean, quick, ethical kill, which is our goal any time we’re hunting. And we’ll have some meat in the freezer this year.