Some of the photos in this article are of a graphic nature to prove a point. I have always been a firm believer that any game can be tracked. After hearing a number of stories about people losing their animals, I am very proud of the fact that we have never lost one, but this year was almost the exception.

Forgive the prelude, but I feel like I need to give a little history to what has led me to this article. It was my 18th day of archery hunting to fill my Mule Deer tag. I do not mind hunting alone until the sun goes down and the lions, tigers, and bears come out! My husband has been by my side for 90% of my hunts. At this time he had started his archery Elk hunt and was not going to be anywhere near home until he had something to bring back with him, leaving me to hunt alone. Sitting behind my desk at work, thinking about the evening hunt that was approaching, I jokingly invited one of my co-workers to join me. Who would have thought that he would take me up on it! He had hunted, and even archery hunted. He hunts land owned by the family ranch and we tease him that his deer are tied up for him!

We walked into a beautiful spring just inside a draw and I threw a stick at a nice little two point (back east you call them 4 points) from 50+ yards away, hitting him in the liver. I have never seen a deer run so erratically! I honestly thought, at one point that he would run right into one of the mahogany trees on the spring! He ran about 150 yards and disappeared around a bend. My co-worker asked, "What do you want me to do?" As I jogged down the trail behind the buck not to loose him, I told him, "Go on top of the hill and see if you can spot him".

I was on my hands and knees looking for more blood as my co-worker ran towards me pointing his finger and said, "I know where he is. He's in those willows, he was still standing, but his nose was almost to the ground." I knew that he was dying and I would soon have a buck on the ground to take home. I was so excited that I walked away from the last blood I found, figuring a majority of my tracking was done. As we started to walk towards the small willows my co-worker changed his mind and pointed another 150+ yards out of the mouth of the draw and said "No, he was down there." We spent the next hour looking for my buck, long past dark. When we couldn't see 3 feet in front of us, we gave up the search until the next morning.

The next morning my co-worker couldn't join me, but my kids did. We were up before dawn and on the way by day break. We went back to the same place we had searched the night before. Doing circle after circle, serpentine after serpentine, we looked for any sign of a downed or even wounded buck. We must have covered an area of over a mile straight out, left and right, of the mouth of the draw. After 2 1/2 hours of searching and finding nothing, I was getting frustrated and praying, "God, please just lead me to this buck". I continued to look in the same place for another half hour and felt like I should head back to the spring where I took the shot. I walked less then 100 yards up the draw and out of the corner of my eye, I saw what looked like an antler behind some thistle on the lower part of the spring. I stopped, took a step backwards and there he was. My buck! I was so excited, yelling to the kids that I had found him and then... I saw his body. The coyotes had eaten almost half of him. The scene that I walked upon was breathtaking, bringing me to the verge of tears. Of the entire deer, the only meat that was salvageable was his two back straps and one shoulder. They had eaten his entire hind quarters, even breaking his pelvic bone. What was left over, the birds enjoyed. He was in the first spot that my co-worker had started to lead me to.

It got me thinking about how important it is to mark and track your animal. We teach in our hunter education classes to pick your hunting partners wisely. I am at fault of this very teaching. My partner that night was not unethical or illegal in any way, so by even my own standards, was not a poor choice of hunting partners. But I took it for granted that he knew what he was doing. Meanwhile, covering any tracks that the buck may have left and losing a good portion of meat to the local scavengers. After taking a shot, watch your animal carefully. If your shot is questionable and possibly a gut shot, remember that a gut shot animal will normally run towards water. Typically, if the animal is shot in a vital area and runs, it will do what we call a "death run". The animal will run as I explained before, very erratic, and at a dead run. I have seen some animals drop almost immediately and those are great! But keep a few things in mind when you have made a clean or even a questionable shot.

Mark where you took your shot; if all else fails, you can always go back and start the tracking over again. Watch your animal closely; this is a hard one because we don't always see where our animal has gone, but in the event that you can see it, stay still and watch it bed down. Moving risks the chance of the animal seeing you, spooking, and running farther. Be patient, if you have made a clean vital shot, your animal will come to rest quickly if you do not push it. I can not stress enough the importance of marking the last place that you saw your animal. Make mental notes of landmarks to bring you back to that point if necessary. If you find yourself having to search for your animal watch your step. Every step you take could be covering valuable sign of where your animal has gone or is headed. Once you find a track or drop of blood, mark it. It's amazing sometimes to look back at the flagging and see the direction an animal is running and even be able to identify where it is likely headed. If you lose the trail from the last track or blood (which happens a lot), don't get discouraged; start circling out. Start at the last track/blood that you found and in small slow circles start working your way out from it. It may require you to be on all fours looking on the bottom sides of branches, leaves, and grass for the smallest pin drop of blood, but eventually you will find something leading you to your animal.

My husband and I have always said that finding the live animal is only the beginning of the hunt. Tracking one that you have shot, creates another and sometimes an even more difficult hunt. It is really important to put more effort into finding an animal that you have shot then into the hunt itself.

Hunting is a privilege that we are each given and it is our responsibility to be ethical when we do it. We teach that ethics is doing what is right when no one is watching. A common misconception among hunters is the game tag that they are carrying and the true meaning behind it. We are given a tag to kill ONE animal. That does not always mean that the animal that we have killed comes home with us. It is our duty to be honest and sometimes even humbled when punching our tags. If we have shot an animal and sure that it was a clean, killing shot, we are to punch the tag. It is not the Division of Wildlife's or the deer herd’s fault when an animal cannot be recovered. This greatly reduces our deer herd and in turn reduces the number of tags granted every year.

I have to say that when all was said and done and I was on the way home with my 2 point, I felt some remorse for the size of buck that I had taken. I have never been a trophy hunter and always pretty pleased with whatever I have brought home, but I found myself reflecting on the earlier stalks in the season. I had seen a group of 7 bucks with two of them potentially being the next Nevada State Archery record, 4 days in a row. I had not only gotten within 100 yards of them at one time, but I also had gotten 19 yards from a bedded 28+ inch 4 point (a 10 point for those back east). When he got up he was in full motion, not allowing me a shot until 50 yards. How many men, women and even hunters can say they have gotten that close to a trophy buck, let alone putting the sneak on it? I felt like I should have been taking home something bigger with the opportunities that I had been given through out the season. But our loving God stepped in and reminded me... It is not about the trophy that I bring home, but to remember the other little blessings that few others can say they have ever had the chance to experience.

God Bless
Julie Hughes
Hook n Horn Guide Service