In the fading light of the fall afternoon, a nice buck appeared, well within range of the archer in his treestand at Willow Point, part of Tara Wildlife near Vicksburg, Miss. The hunter drew his bow, released the arrow and hit the buck, which vanished into the brush.

"When the guides arrived at the hunter's stand, he told us what had happened, and I examined the arrow," said Bobby Culbertson, Tara's head guide. "I could tell the buck had been gut-shot. We decided to leave the deer and not chase it overnight."

Culbertson and the hunter returned to the lodge, ate dinner and planned to locate the buck the next morning. During the night, however, the hunter awoke to a sound that would mortify any bowhunter who had to leave his deer in the woods overnight -- pouring rain.

The next morning at breakfast, Culbertson told the hunter, "Don't worry. If you've made a good hit on the buck, our trailing dogs will find him." However, Culbertson and the hunter realized no blood, and likely little or no scent, would be available for the Labrador retrievers to follow.

"When the group reached the hunter's stand the next morning, he showed us the direction he thought the deer had run after the shot," Culbertson recalled. "We searched on our own for awhile. When we brought a dog in, the dog ran in the opposite direction of where the hunter thought the deer had gone."

In a matter of minutes, Culbertson and the hunter heard the dog's bell stop sounding.

"He's found your deer. Let's go get him," Culbertson said. After walking only 150 yards, the two men spotted the dog and the deer.

"I could have sworn that deer went the other way," the hunter explained. "I can't believe the dog picked up the trail after that huge rain we had last night."

Andy Bensing, president of United Blood Trackers, and his wirehair dachshund, Arno, located this tremendous, 203-inch buck in December 2008 for a hunter on Maryland's Eastern Shore. Arno found the buck piled up in a thicket in the same area a group of hunters had grid searched for hours.

Culbertson laughed and said, "These dogs do it all day, every day."

Why Use Tracking Dogs
Hunters have relied on tracking dogs for centuries to help pinpoint the location of arrowed deer. "Many European countries require hunting with a tracking dog," said John Jeanneney, co-founder of Deer Search Inc., a tracking dog advocacy group. "But only 17 states in the U.S. currently allow the use of tracking dogs to recover deer and other big game."

Southern hunters traditionally used dogs to jump deer out of the almost impenetrable cover and run them toward hunters waiting on stands with guns and to recover wounded deer. As Southern deer drives have given way to treestand hunting over the past 25 years, the custom of dog hunting for deer has vanished in many Southern states.

However, the time-honored practice of finding wounded deer with tracking dogs has grown steadily, because tracking dogs generally can tell if a deer is mortally wounded in a matter of minutes.

Tracking dogs also can follow the deer's trail:

• When there's no visible blood trail, especially in thick cover, flooded timber and swamplands
• When the deer has exited the water
• When a wounded deer runs through a herd of non-wounded deer
• When rain and snow have washed away the visible blood trail
• And when the blood trail is 24-48 hours old

Tara Wildlife includes three, bowhunting-only properties that encompass more than 15,000 acres of hardwood forest and agricultural land in Mississippi and Louisiana.

Throughout archery season, Tara's tracking dogs continuously pinpoint wounded or dead deer. Many of those deer almost certainly would have been lost without the keen noses, the years of experience and the dedication of these Labrador retrievers and their handlers.