MountainHunter

Unless it’s raining or very wet from a recent rain, I actually find it easy to track a bloodtrail at night. The wet blood trail usually catches the light of my flashlight. Of course, if it’s raining, it’s probably best to track the deer immediately anyways, or you may lose the bloodtrail.

I’m a “wait 30 minutes guy”, not a “wait hours and hours” guy, when it comes to tracking a shot animal in any case. I’d rather not wait until the next day. Unless I’m really hungry, I don’t like to eat meat that smells or tastes “funny”, even if it’s safe.

Bob H in NH

I HATE leaving them overnight, but sometimes it is the best plan. I've done it twice, once on of my deer, once a hunting partners. On his, we found the arrow, got about 8 inches of pentration, we tracked a bit into a THICK swamp, and jumped the deer. We backed out immediately. Figuring a 1 lung hit. At this point it had been about 30 minutes since the shot. Found it the next morning about 200 yds above the swamp, looked like we busted it out, it ran up into the hardwoods and bedded down, we found it there in the AM. If we had pushed along the previous night the deer would have kept moving. There was little to no blood and we probably would have lost it.

Mine, was a gut shot, arrow looked completely clean but was covered with clear slime. I watched the deer run around 150 yds, we found no blood, pass through arrow. Hunting partner thought he heard it crash, but we decided it was just busting through a wall of brush. We backed out came back in the AM. After about 1 hour of searching, still no blood, we found the doe lieing almost completely under water is an ice cold stream! Nicely chilled all the way through!! My hands got cold gutting her.

When you leave them overnight, if they die and lay for a decent amount of time, the ground actually can work like insulation and the meat that is lieing along the ground will probably spoil first.

Personally unless I am convinced the deer isn't dead yet, I am going to stay after it, unless I loose the trail.

huntingson

When you say "the meat" it leaves out much of the story. SOME of the meat may be bad, yes, but not all of it will be. I clipped the stomach of a deer a few years ago and found it after 6 hours of tracking. Some of the meat on the belly was already green, but the rest of him was fine. Just cut off the bad parts and eat the good.

rybohunter

If I let a deer go overnight, it's because it needs time to die, not because I can't/won't track at night. I let one go a few years back, overnight temps were 40's ish. Most of the meat was fine, I did cut out some along the wound channel.

DaveH

About 10 years ago, my buddy and I each shot a buck about 1 minute apart. I thought I heard mine crash about 60 yards behind my stand, but we saw his fall and went to retrieve it first. This was at about 6pm on sept 21st and the temps were in the mid 70's.

It took us until after 11pm to get his back to my truck and I was working OT the next day and couldn't look for mine until after work the next day . . . at 4pm. It had rained HARD all night and no sign was found at all, but the buck was lying right where I'd heard it crash . . . and it stunk pretty bad.

I gutted in anyway and took it to the butcher near by for a professional opinion. With all the stomach contents removed, it looked and smelled fine to her. I iced it down immediately - her advice - and took it home where I butchered it. It was possibly the best venison we've ever had and we all lived through it with no ill effects. That's nearly 24 hours in temps in the 70's and it was fine.

LaHoytguy

I had shot a deer right at dark last year early in the season. I went to where I thought I shot it and found no blood, looked for 30 minutes with nothing. Went home and got my dad and bigger flashlights and went back looking. Finally after about an hour of looking and not finding any hair or blood we gave up for the night after he kinda put the idea in my head I must have missed it. Well that idea didnt sit well with me, I knew I had hit the deer. So I went back the next morning and hunted till about 9am and couldnt stand it. I went back and started looking. I imediatly found a little patch of hair and small piece of meat. So I took off walking in a straight line and eventually stumbled over the deer a few hundred yards away. Over night it was upper 60's and it was allmost 80 during the day. I thought for sure the deer was bad but I called my dad and he said just take it to the processor and let him decide. I cleaned it, packed it in ice and hauled it up there. I was kinda embarrased about the situation so I didnt tell him that it sat over night, but instead he called me the next day and asked how long it sat out, lol. I asked how he knew and he said because he could smell it and it took a while for the meat to "set up" in the cooler. He said it did "setup" eventually and it should be ok too eat, just a little gamey tasting. I had most of it made into hamburger meat just to be on the safe side. It did smell a little loud when browning it in a skillet but tasted fine to me. Btw I did hit the deer right in the shoulder with a .300 rem mag, I dont know why he ran so far, just did, I eventually sold that gun!