Blood Trailing: Stories, Mistakes, Unsolved Mysteries

[Jonathan_S]

Yup! It ain’t all sunshine and rainbows. Sorry you found her too late

[Okanagan]

Sad but true that we don't find them all.

Poor blood trail isn't always totally the fault of the broadhead or bullet, but sometimes is due to the animal's position when hit.  Jim Corbett, the hunter of man eating tigers in India, wrote about it.  If an animal is hit perhaps in the chest when its leg is well forward, the hole through vitals may be totally sealed off when the leg is standing or in any position rearward of where it was when the bullet/arrow went through.  The holes in layers from inside chest to outside don't line up to let blood out.  My grandson shot an arrow angling down through the chest of a whitetail buck this Fall with an exit on the front shoulder, that left no blood trail.  There wasn't even any blood on the hair around the exit hole.  Open grassy country and his partner on a point above watched the buck travel 150 yards, bed down and expire.  They found one tiny drop when they back-trailed the buck.

A friend of mine had the same experience years ago on a bull elk shot through the heart with a 300 magnum and Nosler Partition.  We found the bull 200 yards away in an open clearcut by tracking his hoof prints.  I back-trailed from where he fell and did not find a pinprick of blood on bare dirt and a dusty road.

BELIEVE your sight picture at the shot!  Another axiom for me is that if the animal passed that way, it left some sign of its passing and if I am a good enough tracker I can detect that sign. 

[pianoman9701]

It was a warm September archery season about 6 or 7 years ago. I took a quartering away shot at a doe in the 560. She turned as I released and the arrow went into her butt. She walked away like nothing had happened, right into a swampy, high grass wetland. We backed out for a couple of hours and came back. There was a blood trail, but I had to get on my hands and knees to find it in the tallgrass, which had been trampled down by many animals. I couldn't get a clear trail or tracks. I followed for probably 5 hours, forgetting to drink any water. Then I came to a protected spot between a couple of trees with a large puddle of blood and the 3/4 of the arrow laying there - I hadn't waited long enough and jumped her. So foolish! I was able to follow her tracks to the edge of the wettest part of the swamp and they disappeared. I sat down and started getting cramps in my legs. I was barely able to make it out of the woods because of them. We got back to camp and the pain became excruciating. I was pounding water like there was no tomorrow, eating a little rock salt. I had to get some potassium in me. We drove the 30 minutes into town and I bought several bananas and two gallons of sports drinks. Over the next 6 or 8 hours, I stayed cool and continued to pound fluids and eat bananas. The cramps subsided but the muscles in my legs were toast for about 3 days. We went back the following day to try and take up the track again but to no avail. No further blood or tracks could be found.

It did teach me three good lessons. Always hydrate your butt off, don't rush the recovery, and get down on the ground in tall grass. All of those have served me well since.

[elkboy]

I hit an island blacktail doe at 50 yards with a 300 grain Bloodline on 110 grains of T7. That's a muzzy combo that could drop an elk. She still ran 150 yards without leaving a drop of blood. I tracked her after finding about 15 deer hairs where she had been standing. I almost gave up, thinking I had missed, but then I reviewed my shot. Taken from prone, motionless broadside deer. Thirty yards later, I find where the doe had dragged a hoof for about 8 inches. I continue to track for an hour, hoofprint by hoofprint, until I find her piled up. Sure enough, solid double lung shot  Amazing that a little 90 lb island doe could run that far after being hit like that. Wild animals are really tough!

[Jonathan_S]

They sure are tough. Sometimes animals just tip over dead and others will run off with a very similar hit.

Here’s a blood Trailing story of an elk I never thought we’d find... archery hit cow, liver in mid morning on the west side. She went through all the blackberries on the peninsula, bled very little.

Jumped her six hours later and watched her disappear into blackberry and salal. She was found by a buddy who was coming to help... she circled back and died in the field where she was shot and he got off his bike and she was just laying there. This is not the only elk I’ve known to circle back to where they were before the shot.

[BULLBLASTER]

One that comes to mind for me is a archery black bear I killed in Idaho a few years go. In a treestand little bit before dark and comes a bear. I wait for a 20 yard quartered away shot. Close leg is forward and I shoot tight to that shoulder quartered away. Bear scrams and I can see bloody arrow stuck in dirt. Hear running for what sounds like 100 yards in the direction the bear went. Then the running sounds turn and head back up hill and continue with lots of grunting and huffing up the drainage out of earshot. I got nervous at that sound and waited only 10 minutes and then got out of stand. Got my arrow with good blood and was headed toward where I last heard the bear 200 yards uphill from my position. Went a ways and decided with the fading daylight I needed my pistol and I should just follow blood.
Got my pistol and headed onto the blood trail that went down hill towed the creek. Crazy amount of blood and claw marks in dirt I followed for 80 yards and then just nothing... I circled that end area for a long time frustrated that I could lose the track.
Went back to last blood and sat down. Looked down to my left and under a log in a hole was my bear piled up. Arrow went in tight behind shoulder and came out in the lower neck.
I finally decided that the other thrashing I heard going uphill as probably another bear that was working into my bait and had been spooked off by me shooting this one and it running off.
I worked into the night skinning boning and packing this bear, decided I could make the pack in one heavy trip so loaded up and started heading out around 11 pm. Went a couple hundred yards and stepped over a log and it seemed like the world exploded all around me! Thrashing and noises and commotion in every direction bear and far.  : I thought I was going to die. Got my flashlight turned on and realized it was 100 Crow’s that’s I had walked Into their roost.

Another funny part of the story was my wife (gf at the time) and I were headed to my parents that night but I called and said I wouldn’t make it because i got a bear. My mom got all worried and sent my dad to Idaho to help me (all they knew was I was in Idaho) he resisted but then finally gave in and left. I asked where he went looking for me.... he said he went and got ice cream and just told my mom he was going to look for me. 

[RockCreek]

Many years ago.....  When bows were slower than they are today, I shot a deer during the early season in the Wenatchee area. I had been stalking and bumping this deer all morning and he was very aware I was in his neighborhood but for some reason never blew out of the country. Finally he offered me a standing broadside shot at roughly 45 yards in the timber. At the shot he lunged forward and my arrow hit him back a bit.

I watched him run almost straight away from me out of the timber and into the sage/grass hillside below. I followed to the edge of the trees and could see where his tracks cut across an old roadbed before he proceed at a full run straight out and down that wide open hillside and out of sight from where I stood. I figured I'd sit down right there in the sun, Have something to drink as I gave him a little time to pile up then after 30 minutes or so I would hike down the steep hillside and find him easily since there seemed no place a deer could get "lost" on an open hillside that a Quail would have a problem hiding on

Fast forward a hour and I'm glassing to my left and right and downhill 100's of yards in each direction and nothing...............I'm wondering how this animal just up and "vaporized.  No tracks in the rocky dry grassland- no blood to be found on the already red colored lava rocks-   

So I'm standing there thinking now what? And then I notice them...... Yellowjackets, two or three of them buzzing around a rock a few feet to my right. I walk over and bend down and it's only then that I see a small red dot on the rock that looks a little darker than all the million red dots on all the thousands of reddish lava rocks that cover 95% of the country in this area.  So I stand over that rock and I wait... And then low and behold maybe 10 feet down hill and slightly more to the right I see another swarm of those yellow & black "demons" buzzing a different rock. Now, I hate yellowjackets....... Have had numerous run-ins with the little buggers that did not end well for me or them, but right now I'm liking these little winged bloodhounds

Long story short, I find this deer at the end of this trail and he had run probably 300 yards flat out down this hill not straight as I had assumed, but in a sweeping arc that landed him in the only little dip in the terrain I could not see until I was lead to it by my new friends the yellowjackets.

Learned  three important lessons that day:

1) Never assume since you last saw an animal head in a certain direction that they have any intention of continuing that course. They often make some odd direction choices when their blood pressure starts dropping due to a serious case of "Arrowitis"
2) I limit my range on a shot drastically when the animal I'm thinking of drawing on is aware of me and may "jump the string" even with todays faster bows.
3) In warm weather hunting situations, having a minimal to zero blood or hoofprint trail to follow can be tough but sometimes the bugs can be quite helpful. 

[Jonathan_S]

Good stories guys. Yellow jackets have to be good for something I guess 

BULLBLASTERs Dad getting ice cream while he’s cutting up a bear makes me laugh every time I hear it