Blood trailing Stories

[HarryToolips]

I figured it's just before the season so it's a good time to share some blood trailing stories, where those of us who have experienced not immediately dropping an animal can tell their story for all of us to learn from, especially the more inexperienced folks..the more animals retrieved this season = less for preds = better hunting for us all..so I'll start:

I started hunting with an old Savage .30-06 that only has a 3 zoom scope, my first rifle, I spot a nice lookin little whitetail buck in an old clearing early morning..I have a clear shot while being prone, the rest of the terrain dips down lower than where he is, so I decide it's the best shot - only problem is, it's a 250 yard shot with a 3 zoom scope and I'm only presented with the neck for a clean shot - I decide it's now or never - get comfortable, control my breathing, tell myself I'm gonna pull the trigger halfway through exhaling on my 3rd breath- boom!....he jumps up in a way I know I hit him, and runs off into the thick stuff like a bat outa hell...I look at my watch and decide I'm gonna give it a good half hour before going in...I'm by myself, I pray to God to help me retrieve him, and tell God I'm gonna cut my tag right now in good hope..so after 30 I go to where I shot him - good blood, not crazy spray but decent, I start flagging it off, heading into the thick stuff..I'm following the trail along and continue flagging then all of a sudden the blood stops, but noooo deer..WTF! I say...lookin all around where the blood stopped in wider and wider circles - still no deer...then I look up, and see that the direction the WT buck was taking was back into the clearing, so I think to myself that whitey probably clued in and didn't want to run back into the open, so I start looking for another blood trail heading off that main trail- sure enough, I find the other trail and I'm relieved..another 50 yards of trail in or so and I find him piled up under a tree..

[HarryToolips]

http://i1030.photobucket.com/albums/y364/harrytoolips/DSCN0211_zpsl6goisp0.jpg (http://s1030.photobucket.com/user/harrytoolips/media/DSCN0211_zpsl6goisp0.jpg.html)

http://i1030.photobucket.com/albums/y364/harrytoolips/DSCN0212_zpsputrpdrg.jpg (http://s1030.photobucket.com/user/harrytoolips/media/DSCN0212_zpsputrpdrg.jpg.html)

http://i1030.photobucket.com/albums/y364/harrytoolips/DSCN0213_zpsebk5ggbd.jpg (http://s1030.photobucket.com/user/harrytoolips/media/DSCN0213_zpsebk5ggbd.jpg.html)

[Caribou_lou]

Ive had blood trails that disappear in wet vegetation and find myself looking for disturbed ground and guessing where they would have gone. Found both animals. Always ribbon where you find last blood.

[HarryToolips]

http://i1030.photobucket.com/albums/y364/harrytoolips/DSCN0214_zpsbdzqerwr.jpg (http://s1030.photobucket.com/user/harrytoolips/media/DSCN0214_zpsbdzqerwr.jpg.html)

http://i1030.photobucket.com/albums/y364/harrytoolips/DSCN0215_zpseyj6gzo9.jpg (http://s1030.photobucket.com/user/harrytoolips/media/DSCN0215_zpseyj6gzo9.jpg.html)

http://i1030.photobucket.com/albums/y364/harrytoolips/DSCN0217_zps8dce81a2.jpg (http://s1030.photobucket.com/user/harrytoolips/media/DSCN0217_zps8dce81a2.jpg.html)

[two-feet]

Have trailed 2 bears, the first only went 10 yrds and it took me a while to find it as the brush was so thick, the other was a bear i shot at an acute quartering away angle, the bullet took out 1 shoulder, 1 lung and extited the neck, that bear ran 200 yrds and was still highly active when my buddy found it and shot it. Any time you are trailing blood its a nerve wracking experience.

[HarryToolips]

Ive had blood trails that disappear in wet vegetation and find myself looking for disturbed ground and guessing where they would have gone. Found both animals. Always ribbon where you find last blood.
I agree..........

[HarryToolips]

Have trailed 2 bears, the first only went 10 yrds and it took me a while to find it as the brush was so thick, the other was a bear i shot at an acute quartering away angle, the bullet took out 1 shoulder, 1 lung and extited the neck, that bear ran 200 yrds and was still highly active when my buddy found it and shot it. Any time you are trailing blood its a nerve wracking experience.
No doubt, especially nerve wracking following a bear...

[Xenomorph]

No doubt, especially nerve wracking following a bear...

I'll never forget the first bear I really hunted.
Was using a 30-06 and I was definitely lacking "bear" experience, passed on the boiler room as he gave me a perfect broadside at just over 50 yards and went for the neck shot. After just moments before he and I had a very close encounter, God he stank, he was woofing and sampling the air, feet away from me in the dark raspberry tunnel as both caught wind of each other. So I can still see it to this day, look on his face, him continuing to woof and sample the air. Beauty of a boar, BOOM.

My hunting partner and I climbed the ridge and looked for him, he had trashed through the growth like a tank, it's insane how tough they are. Found his lair, stinky cozy place in a hole in the hill, out of the wind and ridden with "food items" ...but no bear. I have no idea how long it took, all we were going on was disturbed surroundings, no blood.

When we finally decided it was
1. Clean miss
2. Lucky bugger just lowered his head enough to make the bullet graze the top or miss him entirely. The image still goes in my head sometimes with him reeling from the bullet, but we never found any sign of blood, just the tank (good 400lber) making a path.

Doubled back to the trail where we had dumped our packs and gear, all we had taken were rifles, knives.

Low and behold, not even 10 feet from our packs, a big, fresh, steaming turd. He had doubled back around us from where we flushed him from his safe place, sniffed our gear and left me a "Don't worry bud, I'm OK!" message.

I have to be honest, that hunt, albeit it didn't end with meat in the fridge, was what hooked me on bears. They also taste fantastic, so it's a win win.

[wideopenthrottle]

one time i was hunting for white tails with a buddy near rock creek...we had a plan to both do a half circle and meet about 2 km away...

as i was approaching our predetermined location i heard a bang that was close enough to make me a little uncomfortable so i ducked down for a minute in case there was another shot that might be coming in my direction....i was down hill of my buddy

...sure enough i hear another shot, then i hear kathump, kathump, kathump, kathump, crash....the crash sound was no more than about 50 feet from me in thicker bush.....

i ran up to it and saw a nice Whitetail piled up in a bit of a hole....
i quickly gutted it for him and waited a couple of minutes but no sign of buddy yet.....
because we were meeting up pretty close to a road, i dragged it out to the edge of the road a few hundred yards and waited a bit more for him but he still hadnt shown up yet....

after waiting a while longer i finally decided to go look for him cuz i didnt want to be sitting too close to a road with an untagged deer....
i decided to stash it behind a log out of sight and went to look for him....

i went back to where the deer was and still no sign of him so i walked up hill for a few hundred yards and it opened up pretty good..i spotted him another couple hundred yards away further down the ridge walking away from me but looking down...

i yelled to him and he waved back so i walked over to where he was looking...he was quite aways from where i had found his deer and going further....i did what any good hunting buddy would do and offered to help him look for blood....

i asked him where he had shot, if it looked like a hit, which way he thought it might have gone...you know the usual stuff...he had been on one little ridge and had spotted it as it was working its way up the next little ridge.....he pointed to the direction he thought it must have kept going after it crested the ridge and out of sight...it had actauly gone over the ridge and doubled back the opposite way but i continued to help him look in the wrong direction for a bit finally saying to him that he must have missed...twice....

our plan was to meet there and then walk back together to camp for lunch so we started to head to the road...i purposely steered clear of the little hole and stayed up on the ridge with him as we walked to the road...when we got almost to the road i was having a hard time containing myself and we were almost on top of the drag trail when i pointed down and said "look there's blood"....

as it was obviously blood from dragging a deer he gave me a strange look and so i pointed to the log and exclaimed "there it is"....he saw the gutted deer and we both broke out in hysterical laughter as he realized something was up....not your normal blood trail heheheheh

[takla1]

Ive not lost many animals in the bush while tracking after the shot over the yrs but one that haunts me was a large bodied bull elk,6x5 I shot in 7-49 about 25 yrs ago.
We had 3 bulls bugleing at first light down in a regrowth cutblock off the river and it was thick.We checked our wind and made our way into their bedroom,they had 4/5 cows in there with them and had been holed up there for over a week.
We could see the bulls racks over the bush but couldn't get a clean shot when they finally winded us and scattered with 2 of the bulls crossing the river.
I made my way down to the river edge and cow chirped and the one bull came out from the other side and slowly started to cross the river back to my side.
He circled below me trying to wind me and came out on a small mound on a dry creek bed not more than 15 yrds from me,i put a 300 WBY round thru his neck as I didn't have a chest shot and I had no time otherwise he would have walked right into me.
My buddy heard the shot and joined me right away and we watched the bull staggering thru the bush bleeding heavily out his mouth and the neck wound then he went down and we thought he was done but he stated to push his neck into the dirt and drive himself forward with his back legs,then stood up and carried on.Never seen anything like it.
We waited for about 20 minites then got on his blood trail which was slowly diminishing and found 3-4 more of these push marks in the sand/leaves where he did the same thing.Eventually after over 2 hr of tracking the blood trail total died.We were camped not more than 1 mile from this spot and were there for another 10 days and looked every day all over that area,there were no signs of crows/eagles scavengers so I'm sure that bull lived.

takla

[Big Lew]

My brother and I once came upon a young fellow that had just shot a buck "in the body" according to him.
It had run off so he had been trying to find it for quite awhile. He didn't seem to know what he was doing
so we offered to help. He showed me where it had stood when hit, so starting from there, my brother
proceeded to look for any blood while I got down on my knees and began to chart it's footprints one at a time
with my thread. My brother had no luck, but I was finding the odd drop as I proceeded. It was an interesting
trail because although it was heading roughly in one direction, it kept going off at angles before heading back
to it's original route. This type to tracking is very difficult, taking a lot of time, as it was through a lot of ground
vegetation with red leaves. After going several hundred yards, taking well over an hour, I came upon a fresh
gut pile.....other hunter(s) coming in from another road had found it, quickly gutted it, and hurried away, probably
chuckling to themselves because with all our talking back and forth, they likely knew we were tracking it.

[HarryToolips]

Great stories there guys....

[whitlers]

one time i was hunting for white tails with a buddy near rock creek...we had a plan to both do a half circle and meet about 2 km away...

as i was approaching our predetermined location i heard a bang that was close enough to make me a little uncomfortable so i ducked down for a minute in case there was another shot that might be coming in my direction....i was down hill of my buddy

...sure enough i hear another shot, then i hear kathump, kathump, kathump, kathump, crash....the crash sound was no more than about 50 feet from me in thicker bush.....

i ran up to it and saw a nice Whitetail piled up in a bit of a hole....
i quickly gutted it for him and waited a couple of minutes but no sign of buddy yet.....
because we were meeting up pretty close to a road, i dragged it out to the edge of the road a few hundred yards and waited a bit more for him but he still hadnt shown up yet....

after waiting a while longer i finally decided to go look for him cuz i didnt want to be sitting too close to a road with an untagged deer....
i decided to stash it behind a log out of sight and went to look for him....

i went back to where the deer was and still no sign of him so i walked up hill for a few hundred yards and it opened up pretty good..i spotted him another couple hundred yards away further down the ridge walking away from me but looking down...

i yelled to him and he waved back so i walked over to where he was looking...he was quite aways from where i had found his deer and going further....i did what any good hunting buddy would do and offered to help him look for blood....

i asked him where he had shot, if it looked like a hit, which way he thought it might have gone...you know the usual stuff...he had been on one little ridge and had spotted it as it was working its way up the next little ridge.....he pointed to the direction he thought it must have kept going after it crested the ridge and out of sight...it had actauly gone over the ridge and doubled back the opposite way but i continued to help him look in the wrong direction for a bit finally saying to him that he must have missed...twice....

our plan was to meet there and then walk back together to camp for lunch so we started to head to the road...i purposely steered clear of the little hole and stayed up on the ridge with him as we walked to the road...when we got almost to the road i was having a hard time containing myself and we were almost on top of the drag trail when i pointed down and said "look there's blood"....

as it was obviously blood from dragging a deer he gave me a strange look and so i pointed to the log and exclaimed "there it is"....he saw the gutted deer and we both broke out in hysterical laughter as he realized something was up....not your normal blood trail heheheheh

That is awesome hahaha

[rocksteady]

I always use sheets of toilet paper for marking blood trails. One sheet per splotch. I find it easier to see versus flagging, especially in low light and it is biodegradable

[HarryToolips]

^^^^very good idea....

[ursusbait]

Great thread!