To The Rescue

Whether you train your own dog or call upon one for help, a blood-tracking canine could save your deer season.

- Will Brantley

EVERY HUNTER SAYS, “THE SHOT FELT GOOD.” THIS ONE DIDN’T.

The buck I’d been after for three days—a heavy, chocolate 10-pointer—was standing 95 yards down the sendero, quartering to slightly. I put the cross hairs of the .308 on the point of his shoulder, expecting to break it and watch the deer fall dead. Instead, the buck lunged into the South Texas brush, his tail tucked tight. Charles Coker, my guide, and I sat in the box blind discussing the shot. The buck was hit. Even though the reaction seemed more like that of a gut shot than a quartering-to shoulder shot, surely he would be dead just inside the brush. After an hour, we climbed out of the box blind for a look.

The buck bolted from his bed just off the edge of the sendero. A pool of bright-red blood was already drying in the sand, and it dribbled into the brush ahead of us. We both knew we should’ve waited longer, but hindsight didn’t change the situation. That’s when I asked Coker, “Do you know someone with a tracking dog?”

BLOOD PACK

A thousand miles away, at home in Kentucky, deer season had been underway for four months, and my 11-month-old Catahoula cur, Levee, was coming into his own as a tracking dog. I’d never had the patience to be much of a dog trainer, but I do a lot of deer hunting. Between finding my own deer and helping friends and family find theirs, I follow 25 or so blood trails in a season. Most are easy to sort out—but there are exceptions.

Shoot at enough deer, and you’ll eventually hit one that you cannot find. In the best cases, the wound is superficial and the animal survives. But sometimes a track is simply impossible for the human eye to see, and dead animals go unrecovered. If you’ve made the decision to shoot a deer, it’s your responsibility to do everything you can to find it. That’s why my wife and I bought Levee.