12/11/2024
This past weekend taught me a valuable lesson. After shooting a buck at 5:10 pm, I knew I'd hit him too far back. I didn't search for blood and instead left the area. At 10 pm, I used a drone to locate him and found him bedded down 150 yards from my stand, still alive. As I'd suspected, the shot appeared to have hit him in the liver area. Another drone flight at 11 pm revealed him in the same location, but in worse shape. By 6 am the next morning, I found him dead in the same bed, 150 yards from my tree stand. This experience shows just how resilient deer can be and why many hunters lose deer shot in the gut or liver. The first thermal image was taken at 9 pm, and a second image was taken nine hours later, after the deer had died. I would not have found it without a drone.
