Elkie's latest track was exhausting and exasperating. A hunter called saying he shot a big buck at first light, and thought he heard a solid hit. Initially he said he used a Rage, but then showed me a Swhacker, which makes a huge wound. The arrow passed through and was coated with liver blood, so the hunter waited two hours before searching for the buck. After two hours the hunter walked in the direction the buck ran, and it jumped from a bed 40 yards from where it was hit, so the hunter backed out.
The buck was shot on the edge of a conservation area, and the buck ran into the worst jungle I've tracked in to date. The field the deer ran into had not been maintained and had nearly every invasive plant in Missouri to list a few: Devil's Walking Stick thickets, Bi-color Lespedeza, Johnson Grass, Autumn Olive thickets, Multiflower Rose, and then there were natives with thorns to include Honey Locust, Orange, blackberry canes, blackberry vines, and then there were weeds to thick to penetrate very far without staying on a deer trail, and those weeds were loaded with burs and stick tights.. From the start I thought it was impossible to track in that mess!
The hunter showed me where the deer bedded for two hours and there was almost no blood!!! From the bed there was one drop of blood and one smear. It was full Sun, 80 degrees, with a hot wind out of the South and the ground was powder dry. From the start Elkie's leash hung up on everything, so she couldn't proceed and she fought the leash, quickly over heating, but not quitting. We fought and busted through 3/4 of a mile of that mess, flagging the trail as we went. Elkie was exhausted, I rested and watered her. At no point did we see blood, so I carried Elkie back and restarted her at the bed. Three more times Elkie ran that 3/4 mile track, hitting every flag! When darkness fell we continued with fashlights and a few hours after dark I called the track for Elkie's sake... she had tracked for 6 hours! In places I crawled on hands and knees, and Elkie had worn the skin raw under both eyes!
It bothered me that we didn't recover the buck, because a liver hit is fatal, so the next morning I was pondering the track when the hunter called saying that he found blood! Elkie and I were back on the track while there was still dew on the ground. The blood turned out to be Autumn Olive Berry bird poop, which looked identical to dried blood. However tracking conditions had improved with the morning dew, so I took Elkie to the hit sight and she immediately took the track, but this time Elkie was tired and moving slowly and methodically as she hit every flag, but then she took a 90 degree turn into a wooded thicket and at long last recovered the buck! Elkie is so tired that she spent the day sleeping and has no play left in her... she gave it all she had!
This was a big bodied buck with small antlers.
