Terry Jones
Trailing wounded deer often hinges on finding one drop of blood.
I am a decent marksman, so most of the deer I have killed over the years have either dropped in their tracks or ran a short distance before expiring. But there have been times when I muffed a shot and had to track down a deer.
My farthest tracking experience took place one balmy day when I was scouting in the Floyd Creek bottom. While walking along looking for rubs and scrapes, a doe and five-point buck trotted up behind me. I twirled and managed to get one shot off with my 30-06 before they bounded out of sight.
I was pretty sure I had hit the buck, but it took a while before I found a few drops of blood on the ground. The ground was dry and hard, so there was no disturbed dirt or other evidence indicating which way the deer went. There also were no trails or peculiar topographical features that would funnel them in any particular direction.
So, I meticulously followed the drops of blood. Whenever I lost the trail, I would go back to the last drops I had found and put my handkerchief, hat or anything else I had to mark the line of travel to try to figure out in which direction he had gone.
Sometimes, I literally got down on my hands and knees looking for the next speck of blood.
Over the course of several hours, I managed to stay on the trail for about a quarter of a mile. The last drop of blood I found was on an old log that the buck had hopped over. After that, there was nothing.
The small amount of blood I was finding and the long distance I had come had just about convinced me that the deer wasn’t badly hurt and I could abandon the hunt in good conscience. Then I noticed a big pine tree top lying on the ground a short distance away. Having read that wounded deer seek cover and will sometimes crawl up into a tree top to hide, I decided to check it out before heading back to the truck.
While walking around the top, something white caught my eye. Sure enough, there deep inside the tangled limbs was the dead five point. Upon closer examination, I found that I had hit it too far back to make a clean kill or produce much blood.
It had been an exhausting day, but I was proud of myself for doing the ethical thing by going the extra mile to find the deer.
Another memorable tracking experiences happened during my teenage years when I killed my first buck. It was late afternoon, and I was sitting against a tree watching a glade near a dense palmetto swamp.
I was depressed because that Saturday was the last day of deer season (technically it ended the next day, but it was taboo in my family to hunt on Sunday). There were few deer in Winn Parish in those days and not many hunters in the Cypress Creek community had ever killed one. I desperately wanted to join that elite club, but as the sun set lower in the sky it looked like my season would end without me firing a shot.
Then I saw a flicker about forty yards in front of me and was shocked to see a spike buck lift up its head and look around. It had somehow slipped into the glade without me seeing it.
I slowly eased up Pop’s 16-gauge Browning automatic and cut loose with a load of buckshot. The deer bounded off to my right and I snapped off a second shot.
Excitedly, I rushed over to where the deer had been standing to look for blood. There was none, just torn up dirt where the buck had taken flight.
Then I saw it. There on top of the leaves were a few strands of hair. From reading hunting magazines, I knew that was a tell-tail sign of a hit.
It was fairly easy to trail the deer for a short distance because its hooves had torn up the ground. But there was no blood. Then the trail disappeared.
There was less than an hour of daylight left, so I began walking through the woods in the direction I thought the deer had gone, looking for blood or other evidence. There was nothing.
Returning to the original spot to start over, I walked past a small tree on the bank of a creek and saw blood smeared about three feet up the trunk. Instead of going straight toward the palmetto like I expected, the wounded deer had made a sharp turn to the left and was headed to a grown-up clear cut.
In the fading light, I was able to follow the scattered drops of blood that became more frequent as I went along. I was several hundred yards from where I shot the deer when I looked up and saw it lying in some tall broom sage. Grabbing its six-inch spikes, I unashamedly let out my version of a Tarzan yell.
Killing that spike filled me with more pride and joy than any of the trophy bucks that now hang on my wall. I had proven myself. I was now a real deer hunter.
Dr. Terry L. Jones is a professor emeritus of history at the University of Louisiana at Monroe. An autographed copy of “Louisiana Pastimes,” a collection of the author’s stories, costs $25. Contact him at tljones505@gmail.com
