The hunters need to know how the bleedings takes place after the deer is shot and how to find those bloods stains etc. if not then he might lose his hunt for his lack of the hunting knowledge. This blood searching is much easier when it is in the snow. But on bare ground it is difficult to trace them. Unless there is profuse bleeding, it is very easy to overlook small amounts of blood and thus lose the trail.
During the season I had shot a deer that ran away. They were two standing together and I straightly follow them up but did not found any blood. The dry leaves where the squirrels were burrowing in these leaves make it more difficult for me to find the bloods.
The distribution of blood along a trail will give the hunter some idea of the location of the wound. Superficial and abdominal wounds will sometimes bleed so little that the only place that blood will show on the ground is where it is dislodged from the deer's body at the end of each jump. If a body cavity is punctured so that blood can be collected there, this blood will often be forced out as the animal's body contracts at the end of each jump. This blood will be found at varying distances from the track with the distance being regulated by the force of the contractions and the size of the wound. Sometimes the only blood that can be found will be on trees and bushes which the deer has brushed against in passing. This seldom occurs until the deer has stopped running and clotting has slowed the flow to a trickle. Very few hunters will follow a wounded deer long enough for it to reach this stage of bleeding.
One of the more difficult tasks of trailing a wounded deer which I have attempted occurred early in the season. Two deer were standing in a hardwood growth about seventy-five yards from my position. I shot at one of them and they both ran. I could follow their course with my eyes, but could not observe their actions and the trees and underbrush prevented me from obtaining a second shot. I was as sure as a hunter can be that I had made a solid hit in or near the shoulder or lung area.
I was so sure of my shot that I did not go to the spot where the deer had been standing, but angled off in the direction of their flight with the intention of picking up a blood trail and following it for perhaps fifty yards to my dead deer. I found no trail, with or without blood. The ground was very dry, covered with dry leaves. The squirrels had been burrowing in these leaves so that it was virtually impossible to follow any kind of a track, let alone find one. Not understanding the lack of a blood trail, I returned to the spot where I had been standing and from there to the first location of the deer.
At this spot, I found a tuft of hair which proved that I had hit the deer. Beyond the hair, I found two slivers of bone and a small piece of lung tissue. I identified one of these bone slivers as a piece of rib. The other I thought was a piece of a shoulder blade. This tentative identification of bone fragments was prompted by an effort to explain the lack of a discernible blood trail. (I was using a .38/55 rifle and the bullet from one of these guns usually leaves an exit wound which permits free bleeding.) About the only possible deductions I could make from the evidence at hand were that I had hit the deer high in the lung cavity that bleeding would be internal until that cavity filled and, since the lung had been pierced, the deer would die.
I followed that deer from track to track, never leaving a known track until I had found the next one, with only an occasional drop of blood to assure me that I was on the right trail. After a two-hundred-yard trail I found blood enough to be seen from a standing position. When I reached that point, the deer lay dead about twenty feet farther on. After founding the tuft of hair, two slivers of bone and a small piece of lung tissue, I was convinced that I had hit the deer. This makes me think that I have hit the deer high in the lung cavity and the bleeding takes a little longer. After following the blood for about two hundred yard I found the deer lying dead.
How the blood is distributed along the tail can help the hunter some idea to locate the wound. Sometimes less bleedings may create problems for the hunter to locate the deer. But very few hunters only follow the deer to the extend it stopped to bleed. |
