This is not intended for you in particular, and is more of a rhetorical question to all who have posted:
What is wrong with actually learned to TRACK footprints of the deer through the forest tuff?
Blood trails are ICING ON THE CAKE- even if you hit a deer well. Its very nice to have, as it tells you WHERE the animal is Hit, WHETHER the animal is Hit, and HOW SERIOUS the wound is. The color of the blood can tell you what organs have been injured.
But, I have tracked several deer that bled internally for many yards, and only hemorrhaged enough to put blood on the ground shortly before they died. Deer fur can absorb a lot of blood when a major artery is NOT hit. So, as nice as blood evidence is to follow, Its NOT THE MAIN DEAL.
Here, the shooter Finally went back, got down low to the ground, and found deer fur indicating a possible location of his bullet's hit. He should have done that at the onset.
BUT HE SHOULD ALSO HAVE BEEN LOOKING AT THE TRACKS OF THE DEER HE SHOT beginning where its 4 feet were located when the shot was fired.
Deer FLINCH, or studder, when shot at or Hit. The 4 feet make a couple of inches of Drag in the leaves,mud/dirt, clay, etc. they are standing on( or walking on) when shot. Those 4 marks, and the footprints of each of the 4 feet are the clearest picture of that Particular deer's individual feet that any hunter/tracker is going to have, until the animal is found dead. They show all the class characteristics of the feet- how long, and how wide each of the two toes on all 4 feet are, and how wide the footprint is.
But they also show "accidentals"-- ie., marks on individual toes that are caused by the deer stepping on stones, or other hard surfaces that take chips out of the toes, and in some cases, damage the toes enough that the toe is permanently deformed.
The Accidentals are what we use to separate OUR deer's tracks, from those of any other animal. The wound often also adds a unique characteristic to the gait pattern of that deer, and that becomes another individual characteristic of that deer that we use.
The Size of the footprints, both width and length, the trail width- is wider the larger the deer- sex differentiation- Does have wider hips to allow for the birth canal, so their rear feet step on the walking tracks of the front feet, but wider, leaving a double wall on the inside of the track, representing both the front and rear tracks-- stride length, and straddle- the distance between the insides of both front and rear tracks, which we also use in determining sex from the tracks-- are all used to sort out OUR deer from others. Use a tracking stick to measure the stride and step intervals, so that you can locate the next track.
IF you do have a "Blood trail", understand that a walking deer( which injured deer resort to as soon as they get over the initial shock) will leave blood drops about every 4 feet on the trail. If you cut a stick that is 4 feet long, or about up the middle of your chest on most men, you can place the end of the stick NEXT to the drop of blood you find, and then lay the stick down in the direction of travel to locate the next drop. It usually will be found within 6 inches, plus/minus of the end of your stick. If you missed a turn, the stick can be left in that position near the last drop of blood as you move slowly in arcs to be right and left to locate the next drop of the blood and its trail.
I have tested myself as a tracker, doing my step by step method, vs. Blood trackers, using toilet paper, trashing the forest floor, and in every case where the deer chose a fork in the trail to follow, the blood trackers went the wrong way. It became a sad imitation of the Tortoise and the Hare, With me, and the Land owner, finding the next tiny drop of blood down the "Other fork"( which I determined the deer would follow because I first determined Eye Dominance to be Right Eye Dominant from this deer's gait), telling the two blood trackers I had found blood, both of them Running over to my location, dropping TP on the blood, having no regard for the deer's tracks, nor for what I was doing, and then hurrying on to the next fork, where they went Left, instead of Right. We did this dance several times, and even the landowner, a retired Deputy Sheriff, who thought very highly of these two men as hunters, began to shake his head at their refusal to stop and take a few moments to consider Why they were always losing the trail, while I just kept finding one footprint after another.
ANSWER: They were thinking like humans, instead of like a deer. They always chose the fork of any path that was the Widest, and had the most head room to make it easier for a human to walk upright. They knew there was a ford across the river on the property off to the Left, and they were sure( I still don't know why :idunno: ) That the deer was heading for that ford.
The deer actually was going around a bed of horseweeds- tall dried stalks that grow close together, and offer great cover-- which he entered from the South, after we had tracked him heading north to the first fork. He layed down leaving us a large spot of blood from a chest wound, but a grazing wound to the front of his chest. The bullet had Not entered his Chest cavity. He got up and sneaked out while we were tracking him past the forks, our concentration totally on the problems at hand, and went back South, past the tree stand where the hunter was when he shot the deer, and off the owner's property onto a neighbor's property, where even the land owner did not have permission to go to recover deer.( The adjoining land owner was Anti-hunting, and had tried to cause difficulties for the deer hunters on my friend's property for years.)
We did spend a bit of time on that property, trying to pick up tracks, but the deer went into tall grass, with numerous trails leading into pines. In the poor light at the end of the day, it was clear we simply could not follow that deer further until the next day. The deer was moving well, and the lack of blood after he got up out of his bed indicated that the wound was closing up and scabbing over. We had no drops of blood along his trail after he got up out of his bed.
There was plenty of cover, water, and food all around, so the deer could hide in the pines for days without being seen, or approached close enough to get another shot. He could survive the wound. If not, the coyotes would get him. Without permission to go on that land, we simply could not do a further search to find the deer. Grrrr. ( I hate having to give up a trail when I have invested so much time in it.)
The two men walked off and went up to check the ford of the river, and didn't come back until after dark. The landowner had a bit of fun with them, Demanding to know who was going to clean up " All that trash" they had left in HIS woods! The guilty looks on their faces were priceless, but the owner smiled, and let them understand he wasn't really mad at them.
He did talk to me privately, and told me he had heard about "trackers", but had never seen it done. He had also heard around the Courthouse that I was a tracker, so he was very interested at how I approached tracking that deer compared to the two blood trackers. If they had simply turned around and looked at the trail of TP they had left on the flat ground in the old forest, they would have been able to determine that this deer was Right Eye Dominant, But they didn't even use their own work to help them in finding the next blood spot.
He was with me step by step, and I showed him each track of the deer, and, of course, the blood drops we found, reading the tracks for him to tell him about the deer we were following. He noted the obvious: That this kind of tracking might prove very useful finding and tracking human suspects at crime scenes, too. :shocked2: :grin:
I am not expecting an answer to my rhetorical question. I am concerned, when reading posts like this, that all this effort and energy is being employed by good men- ethical hunters all-- when I Know that simply learning to read sign and footprints will get the job done better. Tracking sounds impossible, until you learn how to use the light to help see tracks, and then learn how to read tracks and sign. No, not everyone does it, because most people won't even try. If it were "Easy", everyone would do it. :hmm: :hatsoff: :hatsoff:
