If you hunt long enough, you will encounter a time when you track an animal and lose its trail. But what should you do if you lose the trail of what you are tracking? So in this article, we will look at the exact steps of what you should do if you lose the trail of an animal you shot.
Here’s the short answer:
The first thing you should do is look very carefully around you for more blood or a downed animal. If you don’t see anything, look for the trail that the animal was on or tracks of the animal. If you don’t find the animal you shot, try bringing in a tracking dog or some friends.
Now that we have looked at the short answer, we can look more in-depth at each step of what you should do if you lose the trail of an animal you shot.
Step 1: look around carefully
Often times right before an animal dies, it will stop bleeding. This is why it is very important to look around before you start moving again because you could move right past the animal you shot.
Another reason to look around is that you may just be missing the next spot of blood or the next track. There are a lot of times that you are just rushing and aren’t looking hard enough. So before you start moving, slow down, study the ground, and study the brush nearby.
However, if you look around and scan your surrounding carefully but don’t find anything, then you should move on to step 2.
Step 2: look for tracks or trails
Let’s say that you have looked around and can’t find any more blood, the next step is to find the trail the animal is following. The likelihood of a wounded animal running aimlessly through the woods is very low, and they will almost always follow a trail.
In order to do this, you should find the last spot of blood and look for the trail the animal was following. Next, you should slowly follow the trail and look very carefully at the ground and surrounding plant life for blood or tracks.
Another thing that some people overlook when tracking an animal is looking for where other animals of the same kind have traveled. If you find a deer trail while tracking a wounded deer, it might not be bad to follow it as mutable deer often follow the same trail.
Step 3: backtrack
This is a step that is very simple and effective when tracking an animal. Sometimes you are just missing something simple and the only way to find that is to retrace your steps.
The way to do this is just like retracing your steps when you lose something. You should go to the spot of the hit or the first trace of blood and refollow your steps to see if you can sense a pattern. If you sense a pattern you can go to the last spot of blood and use that pattern on the last spot of blood.
An easier way to backtrack would be to take a cheap flashlight or orange marking tape and put them at each spot of blood. With a flashlight at each spot of blood, you can view them from farther off and notice a pattern easier.
Step 4: get some buddies
The only thing better than one set of eyes is two, and the only thing better than two is three, and so on. Not being able to find blood may just be an issue of not covering enough ground. So to be more effective you should get some friends.
If there are 3 or 4 people in the woods looking for a wounded animal, you have more people looking for blood and you have more people covering more ground.
However, there are even times when more people won’t help and in that case, a tracking dog is a good choice. Dogs have a great sense of smell so they can smell where a wounded animal has been rather than having to look for signs of a wounded animal.
Step 5: wait
There is a pretty famous saying among hunters that is “when in doubt, back out”. If you just can’t find the animal you shot even after trying all the steps before, the best move is often to give the animal more time.
The reason you may not be finding the animal you shot is that it is not a fatal shot, yet. So after exhausting all resources, back out of the area and give the animal a couple of hours bed down, and expire. After the hours are up, go back and keep looking and go back through the steps.
Conclusion
Before you give up on trying to find the animal you shot, do everything in your ability to find it. Go through the 5 steps multiple times, make sure to look, backtrack, find trails, get friends, use a dog (if you can), and give the wounded animal some time.