11/08/2024
Copied and pasted but this is good info.. we’ve got a few calls for the dog for tracks described here. Most important thing is to try to see exactly where you hit and watch the deers behavior until it’s out of site, and if you don’t see it fall, give it time.…
Let’s get some blood trail discussion going. There’s a post from this morning showing some pools of blood and many are saying “Dead deer!”
I hate to see that, because it takes a LOT of blood loss to kill one. Nobody can look at a picture of pooled blood and know how soon to track it. Or where it was hit. Did it stand in that spot for 4 seconds? 20 seconds? Maybe more?!
If the deer stood still for 3-4 seconds and you’ve got a one foot circle of leaves drenched with pooling in some of them. That’s a lot of blood! But that same amount knowing they stood there for 30 seconds, that changes everything.
You could cut your arm and stand in one spot for 30 seconds and have blood everywhere and pooled in leaves. But that doesn’t mean you die.
I received permission to use these pictures. They came from a MN page and the responses were “that’s a lot of blood! Dead deer!”
I had a similar situation years ago on a steep angle one lunged doe. Tracked her a mile a never recovered her.
So in my opinion, in these pics that’s not necessarily that much blood. Especially if the hit was low.
The first thing you should notice is the zig zagging in the blood trail. This deer was walking, I guarantee it. If it was sprinting, that trail would look entirely different. They can’t run and leave a zig zag blood trail like that. Running trail for the same hit would have been much more sparse and in a much straiter line.
The deer from the pics was not recovered. Blood looked like that for 50 yards, and the hunter lost blood after 500 yards.
You have to apply common sense to your situation. If it’s a low hit, you will almost always have blood to follow right away. Even a non fatal brisket hit initially bleeds like crazy.
Also, and this one is super important, bubbles in the blood does not mean dead deer. If the bubbles are large and there aren’t many, that can happen when the blood is falling. I backstrapped a buck once (verified later) and I found bubbles in the blood. I thought for sure he was down! Nope. He survived.
If you have lots of TINY bubbles that are clustered together, that is an indication of a good lung hit in my opinion.
I encourage people to post pics and ask for help. But please take the comments with a grain of salt. Not everyone is an experienced tracker, but it seems like people are always eager to speak on the subject while using absolutes. I love that people are eager to help, but please be careful giving advice if you’re just guessing.
I googled it quick and supposedly a 160 pound live weight deer has 1.2 gallons of blood in it and has to lose 45 ounces of blood before it will lose enough pressure to starve its brain of oxygen and die. That’s almost four 12 oz pop cans. Obviously some of that blood might stay in the body. But imagine you have to pour out a little at a time. That’s a TON of blood left behind.
A big bodied buck might need to lose 6-7 cans of blood. It’s just something to think about out next time you feel like you’re following “a lot of blood” or if you find a pool of blood.
It takes massive hemorrhaging to put them down in seconds.
