The story is unfortunately very disappointing all the way around and worth sharing with this group. I backed out 2 hours after my shot Saturday morning and avoided stepping back into the woods until 7 1/2 hours later since I thought it was a paunch hit. I managed to get someone agreed to looking the following morning with a bloodhound if we were not able to recover that evening. That evening, we picked up the trail immediately and were shocked to see a large amount of blood (i.e. a walking blood trail that was easy to follow) for well over 300 yards. The blood was fairly red, but not bubbly and did not resemble my previous experience with liver hits. The strange issue was that I saw the arrow sticking out both sides of the deer at mid-body when the deer was running off, so I don't believe it was a pure muscle hit. At the 350 yard mark of the blood trail, we noticed that the deer doubled back over its own trail. It is also worth mentioning that another member hunted the east side of the property and shot a doe that afternoon, well away from my deer. Well that doe headed due West which happened to be perpendicular to my deer heading South and where my deer doubled back is also where the doe entered the equation. Needless to say, we saw blood going in multiple directions and weren't sure what was what at night, so we backed out and decided to wait for the dog the next morning.
I met the tracker the following morning around 8:30 and we took to the trail. He brought his young son with him as well, which I was particularly nervous about, but he indicated that he had tracked many deer with him and would only help. As soon as we set out on the trail my optimism quickly shifted to pessimism. In the first 200 yards I was following the track, but the dog had headed off in another direction. I understand that bloodhounds track with heads up and differently from terriers and knew that we had multiple shot deer, but still did not feel great about the way he was responding. The dog was on an 8 feet leash, but his keeper was staying 30-40 yards behind and often losing the dog (with no GPS or tracking mechanism). I ended up babysitting the kid who was dragging his feet through the blood trail and shouting for his dad while crying and tripping over logs. After about 30 minutes, the tracker had made his way to the south side of our property and screamed back to me (about a 1/4 mile away) that he had found some blood. By the time I got down there, we found some more blood which then lead to the property line and what looked like a big blood pile 45 yards from my neighbors treestand. We saw a big drag line heading south to our neighbors trailer, but it looked like he shot the deer either that morning or evening before at that location as there did not seem to be any other blood leading to his shot location (i.e. my buck walking to that spot and dying or him shooting my buck at that spot).
Shortly after that we were heading back toward the main blood intersection and the trackers son was falling down and kind of throwing a tantrum. The next thing you know, he has no idea where his dog is and begins to completely freak out, yelling at his kid and then.... firing off his pistol to get his dog to come back. We heard his dog howl ~ 1/2 mile away, but found him about 30 minutes later. The tracker then proceeded to yell/hit his dog, which he then regretted later as we ended up finding a separate amount of blood West of the main blood intersection about 200 yards, likely where his dog was waiting. He claimed the dog only howls when he is on the deer or chasing a fresh deer track, so he then blamed his kid as the reason we didn't find the deer. Shortly after, it was evident that they just needed to leave (about 2 hours later) and I owed him $180. Given that he had been firing his pistol and was holding it when I needed to pay him, I was not going to argue with him as to why I thought the entire event had been a fiasco. I was more than happy to pay him the $180 drive out fee and $400 upon finding the deer if we recovered the biggest trophy of my 20+ year hunting career, but the entire event had been so unprofessional that I was thoroughly disgusted.
I continued to do a grid search by myself for the next two hours, but I was required to be at work Sunday afternoon at a conference 3 hours away and was already late. I was forced to leave what I believe to be a dead deer and my largest trophy in the most unfortunate of circumstances. I'm going to visit my in-laws in the morning so I will not be able to pick-up the trail over thanksgiving, but hoping that my hunting partners see vultures and are at least able to recover him if he is in fact done. It is honestly the most sickening hunting outcome of my career and something that makes you question the time, money, and effort you put into such a passion. I believe in dog trackers, especially those who live up to the responsibility entailed, but I managed to get a bite out of a sour apple. Here's hoping to everyone else having more success than myself this season.
