Animals that die from a broadhead wound die from hemorrhaging, plain and simple. Today's broadheads are engineered to sever major veins and arteries to the point where the wound is not repairable, therefore increasing the amount of blood flow and damage to internal organs. There is no shock impact from an arrow, so having an ultra-sharp broadhead is key, but placing the broadhead in a vital area is just as important.

Whether on the chase for mega-bucks in the Midwest or a 1000-pound Alaskan grizzly, knowing exactly where the arrow enters the animal after the shot is of the utmost importance. If the hit is perfect, a short tracking job will soon follow. If the hit is marginal, key decisions will make or break your end result.

Several factors indicate when tracking should begin. Mother Nature sometimes throws a curve, and that is when you have to decide on when to get after the animal. A heavy rain can wash away a marginal blood trail within minutes. Ultra-warm temperatures start to spoil meat as soon as the heart stops ticking. Where your arrow hits is the only one of these factors that we can control. However, all the practice in the world cannot control nerves, an unnoticed twig or a misjudged distance.

Through the years, I have had numerous experiences tracking wounded animals, but none were more informative than my experiences during the 2005 season.

Less Than Perfect
My first adventure of my '05 hunting campaign led me to the river bottoms of central North Dakota. I was hunting early-season whitetails with Under Armour's Tim Herald during the first week of September. The first evening of the hunt, Tim ran an arrow through a beautiful mainframe 10-point with split eye guards at last light. After the shot, Tim and his cameraman watched the buck sprint to the edge of the field and then tip over backwards.

When I arrived at Tim's stand location less than 40 minutes after Tim's shot, Tim and his cameraman were watching the video footage. The shot appeared to be a little high and far back, but definitely good enough for a kill.

Tim and his cameraman both saw the buck fall over at the field edge, and they even caught it on camera, too. We were all convinced that the buck would be lying dead at the point where the camera recorded his last breath. Or so we thought…

Due to the warm weather, we wanted to get after Tim's bucks to prevent the meat from spoiling. Even though we all agreed that the shot was not perfect, we were confident that the buck was dead. When we reached the field edge, we found nothing but a small pool of blood where the buck had fallen. We backed out and Tim planned on returning the next morning.

When Tim arrived at first light, he headed straight for the field edge where the buck first fell. Upon his arrival, he jumped a coyote no more than 50 yards from him. With no blood trail to follow, he headed to where they had first seen the coyote and he found his buck lying there with not much more than head and antlers. In less than eight hours, coyotes had completely demolished Tim's trophy.

When we realized that Tim's shot was less than perfect, we should have backed out and gave the buck some time to bleed out. If that would have been the case, we probably would have recovered the buck at the last place he had fell, therefore giving the coyotes less time to find Tim's deer.

Any tool that can be used to tell where the arrow hit is a useful piece of information that should not be taken lightly. A bloody arrow, video footage, a speck of blood, or even a second set of eyes all can give us a little better of an understanding of where the animal was hit.