I found out this weekend that I really hate blood triaiing a deer in dead pine straw. Espically where the pine thickets are because the pine straw is thick and deep. The blood can be very hard to find when mixing in with the color and the blood will also fall between the needles and fall deeper in the pine straw making it very difficult to track at times.
i find a corn field that is still standing and wet from the morning dew or a light rain hard to track in. been some years back i had one that i had to track through one it took a day to find him but he was found.....
Pine straw is terrible for blood tracking but I really like it for tracking. It shows the track from the turned up pine needles. I do more "tracking" than "blood tracking" in pine straw.
Im thinking of two places. The first one is a place what was clearcut 5 years earlyer. Where the trees are a good 4 in apart. It sucks crawling through that looking for blood.
And the next would be swamps and or lakes. A friend has lost a deer due to a river.
matt
Try any northeast woods full of sugar maples and oaks in full fall colors! I double-lunged a buck this year, he left a heavy bloodtrail and it still took me an hour to track him 60 yards. Bright red splotches in every direction as far as the eye could see. Had to pick up leaves and rub them to see if the red splotches could rub off or not. Only the toilet paper marker trick helped me to get his direction and keep a handle on the trail he left.
To me, the absolute worse terrain to track a deer has to be a field that has grown over with broom straw and briars. Southern briars will make you wish for a suit of armor. The briars will rip your clothing and skin to shreds.
Obviously standing water is the worst. Next worst would be those damn sugar maple leaves right after they fall. They are full of red splotches! :mg: :mg:
sugar maples and tall grass is always hard to track in. i kno its been said already but those sugar maples make you feel like your eyes are playing tricks on you
Around here, the worst has to be any grass field. I'll take the swamps with water, the maple groves with the red leaves, but I dread the CRP fields around here. We have quite a few of them and get alot of practice tracking through them, but I still hate them. It seems that most of the injured deer like to run right to them too.
Obviously standing water is the worst. Next worst would be those damn sugar maple leaves right after they fall. They are full of red splotches! :mg: :mg:
In super thick stuff I've found I do much better if I get on my knees and look for blood off the ground not on it. From a kneeling or sitting position look up the "line" you think the deer traveled and look for blood about "deer chest" high. You can't see blood rubbed on the sides of tall grass from a standing position.
Yes, I've crawled thru thickets more than a few times in the last 30 years.
Fresh Maple leaves are butt buster. Each year it seems to get harder.
setaside is very difficult to blood ytail in especially when it's dark because there are weeds with red splotches on them everywhere
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