Coopers 2022 Deer Recovery Thread

bowhuntingrook

bowhuntingrook

Old Mossy Horns
Sp8 said:
Happy for the hunter and getting the meat but still think Cooper should get credit. Doubt the hunter would’ve found that deer in a responsible amount of time without Cooper.
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No he said he'd never have looked that far. He didn't have blood either. What's good is that he knows we are here, and Cooper is game for when it happens again to him or his friends. I'm really happy with the extra cues Cooper is now providing me as he matures. Confirming these once again may save his life and increase recoveries in the future, that's what I was excited about with this one. To learn this took some risky situations. He cleaned deer and said liver/lung. IMG_20221024_200048.jpg
 
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bowhuntingrook

bowhuntingrook

Old Mossy Horns
Been a few days and a few non-recoveries, gun season started tough. Before talking about today's recovery I wanted to talk about a track I had yesterday. I started it yesterday morning 24 hours after the shot. The morning before, hunter had shot the deer (ML), attempted to track it, jumped it around 10am and only found a little more blood after that but only a couple drops. They called me at 3pm that day and I advised them that I had work that night and could not help tell morning and that I recommend staying out of there but I understand if they don't given the meat will likely be coyote food that night. They looked again and we're unsuccessful. The blood was dark in the pictures so I was encouraged. When I arrive and after some questioning, we start at the last bed, (I didn't want to waste Coopers energy through the swamp it ran through) and we crossed a creek and went right. So after these hunters jumped this deer, it wasn't long before they heard a gunshot. The gunshot came from the gameland that borders this lease land. Cooper took me to the gameland, I had no blood to go on for 300 yards so I went back to where they were at last blood, and the hunters stayed close this time. We were all looking for blood confirmation but it wasn't until 150 yards or so onto gameland, 450 yards from last blood that Cooper found us a bed. Lots of blood, most dry and a very large matted down area. My instincts immediately go to looking around the near vicinity thinking this is not a bed a deer gets up from, if it does it dies within feet. Also there is more blood here then anywhere on the track and there is stomach contents which we had no indication this was a gut shot. This looks like a kill site, not a wound bed a deer gets up from and there is no sign of coyotes or chunks of meat, hair or entrails. So I let Cooper figure it out from here, we take off same trajectory and 50+ yards away, big spot of blood, another 50 yards same direction and big spot of blood tell another 50 yards or so a bed with large amount of blood again, but also the saplings are coated in blood around this spot as if deer rubbed along them. From here Cooper circled and attempted to find this deer in every direction, sometimes restarting himself at the original bed with gut in it, we never found anything. Eventually, a few buzzards showed and swept through above the gut bed, once they found no deer they left. As far as we were from a road, I can't imagine that gameland hunter was shooting a doe around 10am, but the hunters are having a hard time believing my theory since they havent' seen any obvious boot prints. My thought is, the GL hunter shot the deer, whether he hit it or not I don't know but I believe he did considering we went from no blood to a lot of blood. The deer after being hit a second time, turned and ran backwards along the path it came from the original hunter, backtracking about 150 yards to the gut bed where it was eventually loaded on a cart that day and pulled out. Either way I have all the confidence in Cooper finding fatally shot deer, no way that deer is in those woods while we tracked.
 
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bowhuntingrook

bowhuntingrook

Old Mossy Horns
Shot 540 pm yesterday, jumped in cutover 45 minutes after the shot, last blood near that bed 75 yards into the cutover. We start track at 3pm today, 21 + hours after the shot, in just a few more minutes of talking I realize the odds are stacked against us a lot. The area has already been grid searched and had another dog. Cooper says oh well, turns out the Hunter did kill the deer, we weaved through the cutover, no restarts necessary and found the deer, it probably ran another 75 yards after being jumped, total track 150 yards. Low and forward, my guess is some animal opened it up overnight. Also remember, the arteries that come off the heart are above the heart.IMG_20221031_162343.jpg
 
bowhuntingrook

bowhuntingrook

Old Mossy Horns
So I haven't been sleeping much between work and tracking but got a few hours of sleep this morning when I got home from work. I woke up and was able to talk to a few hunters over the phone and had just enough time to help a hunter on gameland before taking my son to soccer. He was hunting from the ground this morning and was able to take a shot at a buck about 25 yards to his left. The deer ran toward the hunter and veered while running to his left eventually over a knob and out of sight. The hunter found blood on the trail near his tree but that was it. This is not uncommon with muzzleloaders, many times it can be due to a lack of an exit hole. I decided to start Cooper on the blood near the hunter's tree as the hunter wasn't 100% sure where exactly the deer was standing when he shot, but Cooper immediately backtracked to the hit site anyway to get more information. I compare this to forcing someone to start a good book at Chapter 3, so I decided to be patient and let Cooper do his thing. We have to remember that while the hunter was telling me everything the deer did before and after the shot, Cooper wasn't listening. I can tell Cooper is really working the hit site, the hit site has more smell than anywhere else on most tracks we take, once Cooper left that area there wasn't any other blood that hadn't already been discovered by the hunter. Once Cooper tracked past the hunter's tree he worked and worked and finally tracked a half loop back and behind where the hunter was sitting but toward a dirt road. Cooper crossed this dirt road and sped up as he became more confident in the track. After crossing the path he went down a heavily used game trail where I told the hunter to look closely for blood here. Before the hunter could do so Cooper was tugging at the deer's hide just 20 more yards into the woods. Thank you to the hunter for calling early, marking the blood you had and trusting Cooper.

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bowhuntingrook

bowhuntingrook

Old Mossy Horns
Hunting Nut said:
Awesome !
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Funny thing about the start of this track was first time I set Cooper down to start the track, I set him on a snake, he sniffed and jumped away immediately. Fortunately it was one of those grey garden type snakes. Good to know that some of that snake avoidance training we did years ago is still in the back of his mind. No telling how many snakes he jumps over a year.
 
bowhuntingrook

bowhuntingrook

Old Mossy Horns
Ran 3 calls today, found 2, here's the last one. Deer quartering toward the hunter but hit behind shoulder, they tracked 400 yards, called me last night. They found bloody corn although they weren't hunting over corn so we had good idea it was gut. They stopped at a swamp. Cooper ran that 400 yards in 3 minutes probably tell we got to the swamp, we found out water was the reason for running out of blood. Coopers is no Micheal Phelps but he's got heart and we eventually got through the sticks, grass, and beaver dams to a pond where I could see the buck submerged just ahead. We found him 100 yards past last blood. We started the track 18+ hours after shot, pond kept deer cool and no predators had touched it.
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bowhuntingrook

bowhuntingrook

Old Mossy Horns
I got a call around 3pm on 11/3 and was told of a buck that looked, on video, to have been quartering away but hit low and too far forward. The group who I know has plenty of experience tracking, was able to track the deer that day approximately 200 yards total, this included 3 wound beds within the last 100 yards. The hunters backed out after the last bed. The hunters were very realistic with their expectations and we had a feeling that we may be dealing with a live deer whether we track it that evening, or the next morning. We decided to track the next morning, to give the deer every possibility we could to pass.
We started the track the next morning at 8:30 am, it had been 24 hours since the hunter had shot the buck. We started at the hit site, after 100+ yards of nice hardwoods we took a left into the briars, it was here Cooper showed us the wound beds 1 by 1. After the 3rd wound bed, Cooper continued with confidence, I kept him close to me in the thicket and eventually it opened up into the hardwoods again, we are about 100 yards past last blood. Cooper makes a very decisive decision to cross the creek here but after that, he begins circling. I can see a fresh cutover 40 yards ahead of us that would be in the same direction the deer was traveling, and Cooper eventually picks a heavily used trail in the tall grass of the cutover. As we track, I'm always remembering spots where Cooper struggled or spots where sharp turns were made. Eventually, I pick Cooper up, as he is doing more searching then tracking. We make the walk back to where Cooper crossed the creek with confidence, and he crosses the creek just the same. Cooper circles multiple times again and now takes a left turn to follow the creek bottom. Cooper is making deliberate left and right movements, nose down and at a great pace. Now we are in a thicker grass type area on the edge of the creek bottom, after traveling 150 yards down the creek we come out to enter the hardwoods again and we jump the buck. It was obvious the buck was weak as it let Cooper very close, too close. Cooper is going nuts now, as we sit and talk about our next step, we give the deer time to bed again. We start the track, but keep our eyes forward, after another 60 yards or so, I look to my right and there is the big buck bedded, staring at me just 20 feet away, he's locked in on me, now only 10 feet from Cooper. We pull Cooper back and we are able to dispatch the buck. He runs another 20 yards and it is over. We are glad the hunter was able to put closure on this. It is inevitable this buck would have had a rough end when the coyotes found him. Thank you for trusting us with your deer.
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