We got out at about 8:00 AM and met the hunter to discuss more about the shot and he took us out to the hit site. We started the track at the hit site and Maize started working the trail. We had to re start her a couple times and she started tracking up hill the direction the buck had come from. We wernt getting any conformation in the form of blood but she was working toward a known bedding area. At this point we didn't know where exactly where the bolt hit. The bolt could have been in the ham or any number of places. The blood we did have at the hit site looked more like muscle blood with to visible gut matter. So after going about 400 to 500 yards we thought it might just be a muscle wound but decided to go back to the hit site and try again. Its hard to say what Mazie was tracking, it could have been the bucks back trail or another deer could have walked in the blood and headed back to the bedding area. If starting at the hit site didn't work then we were going to go into the swamp and work parallel to the transition line to see if we couldn't get lucky and cut his trail.
So we started the trail again and made some head way then she found some blood after the point of loss heading into the swamp and kept on the trail finding more drops then a wound bed and finally the dead buck! We figure the trail to be about 15 hours old.
Here's some pic's of Maize with my wife and the hunter.
