Everyone please understand we are using a dog to try and locate your downed deer. They are not machines or miracle dogs. They can not find a deer that is not dead!!! If your deer is dead and you follow these couple of tips you are setting yourself up for success. They do amazing work and can clearly track better then us humans. The worst thing you can do is track to soon (give the wounded deer time to die!!! Wait 2 hours if you can before you start tracking).
Stay quite in the woods and mark the blood trail with flagging strips or TP. If you jump your deer back out ASAP and give them several more hours. If you are struggling to eye track (looking for blood) at that point you may want to consider bringing in a trained tracking dog. Once a deer is pushed there is no telling how far they will go before dying!!!
We ALWAYS start the dog at the shot site. This is where the dog can pick up the most scent and from there learn which deer is wounded and while we retrace the blood trail the dog is learning who the individual deer is so when the blood trail stops the dog can continue on tracking by following the deer hoof scent/body scent. Blood is not necessary to successful track your deer.
This is a hobby for all of us. We all work full time jobs so calling us sooner gives us more time to set up a game plan or locate another tracker. Calling us 24 hours after you shot your deer makes it extremely difficult. We can track 24-40 hours after the deer has been shot!!! But the odds of recovering your deer dramatically decreases. Try to call within 12 hours for optimum success.
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