Back at camp, Dad told us about his morning. He was upset – disgusted, angry, miserable.
After we'd had an early lunch, he got out his rifle and fired it at a soda can on a dirt bank, to check his scope. Twice he hit within an inch or two of its center. I looked at him, then at Richard. "Let's drive down there and look around," I said. So we did.
Upon arriving, I walked with Dad down the range road. As we walked, he said the deer had run up that way after the shot. I kept my eyes on the ground as we walked. Then I spotted what I'd been looking for.
"Blood," I said. "Here's some blood, right here."
"Where?!" Dad replied.
I pointed it out. It was dried and brown, but the rusty-round spots of blood on the patch of clay were unmistakable. I asked Dad to go to where he had been when he took the shot. He did so, as Richard and I waited. Then I had Dad put me where the deer was when he fired. No blood there, but no matter.
Then I had him put me where the deer had run into the woods. He did. I spotted more blood just a few feet off the range road. "Blood," I said. "We're going to go find your deer."
I trailed the deer into the woods, as Richard helped by staying at the last spot of blood until I found another, and then he'd move on up. Dad joined us. As we progressed, the blood trail got better instead of worse. Several times Dad asked to see the blood we'd found.
"Good blood," I announced as I found another sizeable spot. "We're going to find your deer here in a little bit." The deer had turned downhill by this point, a scant 15 or 20 yards from the range road. I knew it would not be long.
I announced the progress as I trailed. "Blood... blood... good blood... deer!" I had looked ahead and spotted the deer, lying in the brush just ahead. I approached it. She was shot well and good, and had been dead for a few hours - probably had expired even before Dad had gotten hung up in the stump hole.
Dad was beside himself with joy. His voice cracked as he choked up and said, "You don't know how much better this makes me feel!" I grinned as I hauled his deer the 45 or so yards to Richard's ATV. We congratulated him on his shot – the deer had been quartering towards him, and had been hit just behind the shoulder on the right side, and exited the gut on the left side. By rights, the deer should have folded up right there, or at least stumbled. But deer don’t always do what they're supposed to.
For instance, this deer ran away with its flag up, though it was mortally hit with 240 grains of jacketed lead. The old deer-camp wisdom says that a hit deer won't do that. But this one did. It was a lesson well-learned, and we won't be forgetting it.
For quite some time afterward, Dad called me his hound dog, on account of my tracking job. Whenever he says that he wouldn't have gotten that deer but for my tracking, I just reply that I would have had nothing to track if he hadn't done his part and hit the deer. It was a team effort. We'd been a team for so long, it was just second nature for us to work together when it came to bagging a deer.
A comfortable routine.
- Russ Chastain
