The Blood Trail Buck

September 2^nd 2023

Moving up the dirt road along the canyon side I spotted two doe’s moving through the tan grass between the sparse blue oaks in the hot midday sun across the other side.  I figured I had just bumped them out of their shady beds as I was driving by on my way to set up camp for the weekend.  It was warm, probably 90 degrees and the sun was almost directly overhead.  I was surprised to even see them at all, but happy about it.  I figured this would be like many hot dry weekends in California’s A zone, see a few deer, get some good exercise, come home with an unfilled tag and hoping for the weather to change and get the bucks stirred up and moving, preferably before the end of the season.

  I was climbing up the canyon road towards camp, looking but not expecting to see more than I had already seen when I hit the brakes.  I wasn’t looking specifically, but my brain shouted “Buck!”  I looked and sure enough, a buck was standing between two oak trees across the canyon from me.  The canyon was tight at this point, he was close enough that I could tell it was a buck without my binoculars.  I reached to the passenger seat and grabbed my 10x50’s and looked at him, sure enough it was a buck.  He was standing quartered to me slightly and looking downhill right at me.  I couldn’t tell how many points he might have, but I could clearly tell he had forks on both sides, and they were tall.  He had thick bases, and that with the tall forks told me he was likely a mature buck.  I debated for a moment, this was too easy, then again what are my odds of seeing another shooter buck in the hot weather?  My rifle was packed away and my ammo was too, all buried under my camping gear in the backseat.  I thought he will for sure run off as soon as I open the door.  I got out and opened the back of the truck and began to unbury my rifle.  I kept looking back and he hadn’t moved.  I figured he would have bounded over the trailing ridge he was standing on three quarters of the way up the steep mountain.  I managed to get the rifle out, then dig to find the bag with ammo, then dig more to get my shooting sticks out.  I finally had everything out and turned around, he was still standing there!  I moved off the road and a bit to try and get to where I had a decent angle with no trees or brush in the way.  I couldn’t take a standing shot, tree limbs, I couldn’t take a prone shot, too much brush and nowhere flat enough, finally I found a spot to sit and set up the sticks.  He was still standing there staring at me, probably wondering what this comedy act was all about!  I put a round in and settled down to take a shot.  With all the commotion and trying to stay calm, my heart was now pounding.  I pulled out my range finder to check his distance and to my surprise, he was only 134 yards across the canyon.  The steep grade of the canyon sides made it look deceivingly farther.  I finally settled down and debated where to place my shot.  The angle made it a little tricky, he was uphill and slightly quartering towards me. If I went behind the shoulder, it would be a gut shot for sure and probably ruin a ham or loin, I made the decision to take a mid to high shoulder shot, edging towards the rear.  I pulled the trigger and felt the familiar recoil of the model 70 rifle.  It was a definite hit.  With the recoil I couldn’t see the impact, but I instantly put another round in and got the scope back on him.  He had turned away from me and was staggering uphill and away from me, and in two steps was behind a tree, I briefly saw his butt as he disappeared behind some brush.  I began to breathe a little again.  I wish I had seen him drop, but I was confident he had not gone far, he seemed to be hit hard.

I called my buddy Marc’s cellphone, service is spotty up there, but sometimes works, he was up the canyon only a few minutes or so ahead of me searching for a spot to make camp.  He answered and asked “did you get one?”  When I said “yep”, he said a few choice words and said he was kidding when he asked that.  I confirmed that in fact I had just shot a buck.  He came back down the road to me, and I told him the story.  He decided to go back up to where he had just dumped his gear for camp and would come join me to help with the recovery.  I laid a log along across the edge of the road pointing towards the buck, so I would be able to see direction from where I had shot from and found a cattle trail down to the bottom of the canyon.  It was only about 100 feet to the bottom, but it was steep.  In the bottom was a rocky spring fed creek that only had some puddles left in spots, but steep rain cut banks.  It wasn’t too hard to cross on foot though.  Then the climb up the dry grass slope.  It was very steep with few places to get a foothold, at times I was two feet and one hand on the hillside!  I made my way up to where I thought the buck had been standing when I shot and started looking for blood.  Eureka! I found blood, it seemed to be trailing uphill and away from where I thought he was standing so I began to follow.  The blood trail led me uphill about 20 feet and then turned to the right along the hillside moving away from where I had shot from, just what I saw him do through the riflescope.  Marc was in the bottom of the canyon by now and we were close enough to be able to shout to each other.  He decided to stay at the bottom in case the buck went down the hill, while I tried to follow along the trail it looked like he had taken.  The hillside was still steep, but not as bad as coming up the face of the trailing ridge the buck had been standing on.  The blood trail disappeared; I tried circling but found no more blood leading away.  Now I began to doubt my shot, had I gut shot him?  Did he stop bleeding and start moving hard?  I have heard of gut shot bucks traveling long ways before dying.  In this country, covered in brush piles and oaks, he could have gone a couple hundred yards in any direction and disappeared to die unfound.  With every step I was more and more worried with a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach.  The hillside curved around after a couple of hundred yards and opened into a beautiful little bowl dotted with oaks.  I was continually scanning every brush pile and tree for signs of the buck.  Marc had made his way through the bottom and into the bowl as well where we met up and discussed the situation.  I told him that no matter what, I was considering my tag filled.  We worked our way up to the top of the ridge and back towards where the buck had been to begin with.  We came down over the edge looking back to where I had shot from, and I tried to figure out exactly where he had been standing when I shot.  It looked different from above, but checking all the brush piles and looking around, Marc found some blood.  I worked down below him a bit and found the blood spot I had seen when I first started.  Then he found a lot of blood, blood I hadn’t seen before.  We found where he had stood still for a moment blowing blood out both sides.  With that much blood loss, he could not have gotten far.  It turns out he had done exactly as what I thought I had seen, he turned, went away from me and uphill, but what I didn’t see is when he turned and back-trailed before going down hill!  He was 20 yards down the hill from where I first found blood, piled up against a grey downed pine tree, blending in perfectly and hidden from view when above him.  I had crossed his blood trail between him and the point where he had turned around.  I followed up and to the right then the blood disappeared, If I had turned left, I would have seen where the blood trail really started, 10 yards farther uphill and to the left.  The blood trail was shaped like a ‘T’ on the mountainside, I never saw the left side of the trail, only the right.

  It was a good ending, with a great lesson in blood trailing.  Just because you find blood, don’t always assume you found the start of the trail!  I found the last part of the trail and followed it backwards away from the deer, missing a turn, and added a whole lot of unnecessary stress and steps to my day!  The shot had entered the shoulder high and slightly back, it passed thru both lungs at an angle, and went right above his intestines and exited.  He had a bit of smell of a gut shot deer, but the guts were still intact, a lot of blood in the cavity though.  It was a rather easy haul out, he slid down the mountain most of the way, the hardest part was the last 100 feet back up to the road!