Traditional Bow Hunting Tips with W.A.C.Outdoors. Tip #3

My name is Scott Moore and you are watching Whack Outdoors. I had a successful hog hunt last night. I didn't have enough light to get any video. I was shooting video. I got the audio and no video. The 2012 hunting season has been a strange season for me. I have had some pretty good success but I did not do a very good job of capturing any of my hunts on video. But I just wanted to share with you what I could of this hunt. I shot the hog at dark. I chose not to try to track that hog in the dark because it was in the it was about 38 39 degrees. It's pretty cold overnight. I decided to come track this hog in the daylight and I thought I'd go ahead and turn the camera on and bring you along with me and point out a few tips that might help some of you successfully track your game in the future. So you stick with me. I'm going to grab the camera and we're going to take a look and see if we can't find this hog. All right the first thing that I'm seeing here is the moss and pine needles are scuffed up here going down over the break of this hill. There's hog rooting everywhere but this is not hog rooting. This is definitely some hooves kind of splaying and sliding around. It's the best indication the first thing I've seen. It would give me a feeling that the hog that I shot last night headed this direction. So we're going to move forward here a little ways and see what we can see. All right I've traveled in the general direction that those scuff marks indicated to me that the hog probably went and I've gone about 20 yards and I have not found one thing on the ground to indicate any blood sign. But if you look here I've got a small pine tree and about two foot off the ground I have a smear of blood on this pine tree. So that's a pretty good indicator to me that my hog has gone this direction. It's the first real good sign I've seen so we're going to continue on. Matter of fact I just I just now saw the arrow. Bear with me here. Okay the arrow's laying right there. That arrow's got some good blood on it from point to knock. So things are looking up pretty good here. There's still really no blood on the ground. Just saw that one smear. Okay we just found the arrow and I took a good look at it and it's very obvious that this arrow passed completely through the hog. It's covered with good bright blood from point to knock. Good indication of a good solid hit. But I have gone 30 yards maybe 40 yards from where I've actually shot and hit the hog. Other than that smear of blood on the little pine tree the only blood that I found on the ground I don't know if you can pick this up on the video I've got one little drop of blood on a leaf that is smaller than my fingernail. So if you're going to take up the sport of bow hunting you're just going to have to accept the fact that you will be tracking the animals that you shoot and the amount of blood on the ground is not necessarily an indicator of what type of hit that you've made. So when we take it upon ourselves to be bow hunters and shoot these animals we have to be prepared to utilize every resource available to us to pursue track and recover these animals. So just stick with it we're going to keep going to see if we can't find this thing. All right a half hour of time has elapsed and I have just from that little spot of blood that I found just taken likely routes of travel based on the terrain looking for scuffed leaves looking for scuffed up turned over soil moss sticks and uh I found this little bit of blood right here and again it is absolutely not much I found that good splotch of blood right there and from here I have some pretty thick terrain this is absolutely not going to be easy but what I'm going to do is I am going to based on the fact that the leaves were scuffed up indicating the animals a little bit weak maybe and I'm going to assume he's taking the course of least resistance there's three gullies right here in front of me I'm going to start working down all three of these gullies and just see what I can find. All right I got a gully on each side of me and I've gone down both gullies just a little ways there's a lot of scuffed marks and dirt kicked up in both gullies but there's also a whole lot of hogs in this area I didn't find any blood so I got up on a little ridge between the two gullies and I found this leaf right here it's got some blood on it but you can see where the blood hit the leaf and splattered and the way the blood splattered when it hit the leaf is the direction that this hog was moving and from what this blood splatter on this leaf is telling me the hog went right down this real skinny razorback ridge right between these two gullies so I'm going to head down the ridge here looking off on both sides in the gullies and see what we can see. One very important thing that I want to point out as you're tracking a game animal that's wounded and they start to meander and go back and forth it's really easy to lose track of the trail lose track of the last sign that you found and also lose track of yourself and where you're at what I've been doing back behind me as I go every time I find a good bit of sign that I'm convinced is from the animal I'm tracking I hang a piece of surveyor's tape and as I look back the direction that I have come I can look up the hill and I can see my tape and I get a real good idea then of a line of travel so I have a pretty good idea as I look back up the hill to kind of know what direction to go back down the hill continuing to look for more sign. All right I've just I've just found some real fresh hog droppings matter of fact I smelled them before I saw them this again sometimes is a good indicator of the animal that you're trying to track and follow I'm just going to just head straight down this ridge now and just see if I can see them all right we got a hog laying right here in the bottom of this little gully I'm very happy to see this thing laying here we'll get down here we'll take a good look at it well we found this hog I brought you along with me to look for it I hope the information was of use to you hit the hog right here which kind of looks a little far back but the hog was quartering away from me so that hit proved very effective the entry wound was high enough off the bottom that not a lot of blood was getting placed on the ground but just when you go bow hunting and you shoot an animal just just hang in there pay attention to all your sign be diligent about looking for your animal pay attentions to everything around you other than you know just blood on the ground and pay attention to the terrain lay the land where the animal would most likely go and I just hope this helped you a lot I'm really excited about this hog as always I thank God for him it's one of his creatures that he's provided for us and I just thank you for it