The shot was marginal at best, but I immediately knew that it was not a paunch shot. I waited for about two hours in my stand before signaling to Bill to come meet me at the stand site. We reviewed the hit site and found no arrow, but good blood, and a lot of it.

Now I know I stated that it is very important to review every piece of information available to help aid in the recovery. However, this situation presented little more than a bright-red blood trail. There was no arrow and I had a hard time seeing exactly where the arrow hit because of the lush early season foliage. We used the information that we were presented and we were off.

As Bill and I followed the trail we had good blood, however, the blood was lacking bubbles, indicating that my shot was probably too far back to clip a lung. At that point we should have backed out and given the animal a couple more hours, but I didn't want the events that happened in North Dakota to reoccur.

About 100 yards into our tracking expedition, we jumped the deer and he seemed to have a lot of life left in him. We backed out in order to give him more time.

Well, it turns out that those two extra hours were not enough and we ended up jumping the buck again. He ran about 50 yards and tipped over backwards. Instead of backing out, Bill and I ran to within 30 yards of where he fell and I ran another arrow in through his vitals.

I knew my initial shot was good enough to bring the animal down, but I should have realized that I needed to give the buck more time to bleed out. It is a question of ethics. Do I take the chance of having my meat spoil, or do I get after the animal and risk bumping him and loosing the blood trail altogether?

I decided on the latter and got after him. Sure, it all worked out in the end, but if he wouldn't have fell that second time, we would have had a hard time getting back on blood.

Conclusion
When to pick up the trail of a wounded animal is a judgment call. Do you take the risk of trailing a gut-shot animal too early to avoid warm weather spoiling? If you have jumped an animal, is it worth staying after it to make sure that coyotes don't get to it before you do? These are all calls that you will have to make at some point or another if you're an archery hunter. I have learned through experience, and I have found that to be the best teacher of all.

Editor's Note: Check out Petersen's BOWHUNTING Radio at bowhuntingmag.com to here Judd Cooney fully explain his tactics on trailing wounded game.